Panel Discussion: Remembering Peter Hujar
Fran Lebowitz, Vince Aletti, and Gary Schneider discuss photographer Peter Hujar's life and work with curator Joel Smith at the Morgan Library.
Why we picked this
The three panelists aren't commentators — they were all photographed by Hujar, all part of the downtown New York world he documented. Fran Lebowitz in particular knew him well and speaks about that era with authority that no scholar can replicate.
Peter Hujar photographed the artists, writers, performers, and outsiders of downtown New York from the late 1960s through the 1980s, creating a portrait of a world that was dismantled first by gentrification and then by the AIDS epidemic. His photographs — quietly demanding, technically rigorous, emotionally direct — are among the most important documents of that period.
This panel brings together three of his longtime friends and subjects: Gary Schneider, a master printer and author who worked closely with Hujar; Vince Aletti, a writer, curator, and photography critic who knew him throughout his career; and Fran Lebowitz, who appears in some of Hujar’s most memorable portraits and has spoken about him with characteristic precision on the few occasions she has chosen to. The conversation will be moderated by Joel Smith, the exhibition’s curator and Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography at the Morgan.
The panel celebrates the opening of Hujar: Contact, the Morgan’s new exhibition on Hujar’s work. Admission is $25; $20 for Morgan members. Visitors are encouraged to view the exhibition beginning at 5:15 PM before the discussion starts at 6.