Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Portraits in Life and Death

Portraits in Life and Death

Hujar, Peter
Moser, Benjamin
Sontag, Susan

Hardcover

ArtistsGifts & Stationery GeneralGeneral Photography

Publisher Price: $75.00

ISBN10: 1324092173
ISBN13: 9781324092179
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: Oct 8 2024
Pages: 100
Weight: 2.29
Height: 0.60 Width: 10.20 Depth: 11.20
Language: English

Portraits in Life and Death is the only book of photographs published by Peter Hujar during his lifetime. The twenty-nine portraits of creative people--ranging from William Burroughs, Susan Sontag, and John Waters to Larry Ree, founder of the Trocadero Gloxinia Ballet Company, and T.C. (whose identity is unclear)--possess a haunting beauty and degree of psychological examination that is both offbeat and riveting. Following the portraits come eleven images that can only be described as devastating: pictures of semi-preserved, clothed bodies of nineteenth-century Sicilians found in the arid catacombs beneath a church in Palermo.

There is no necessary connection in the photographs themselves or between the two sections of the book, yet the pictorial progression from life to death is an emblem of the journey we all take. The living subjects seem to be meditating on the mortality that is limned with such profound effect in the catacomb pictures. In different ways, both groups of images speak to the basic fears and emotions that we carry with us, somewhere beyond our consciousness. After viewing this extraordinary book, it is almost impossible not to make those connections and interpretations or be moved by Hujar's consistent ability to convey what appears to be the inner spirit of his subjects.

Even so, an air of nonchalance, even gaiety, hovers over the photographs. The book is odd, oblique, sometimes opaque, and certainly deeply felt; but it sticks to the mind like a burr. It will be noticed. Once seen, it cannot be forgotten.

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