Ought to We See Peter Hujar’s Contact Sheets?

Art Review

Though not made for public consumption, the darkroom work prints reveal his portraits as excerpts of a dialog, quite than reminiscences snatched from the ether.

The Morgan Library & Museum is likely to be milking its Peter Hujar assortment, however I’m not complaining. Hujar:Contact is the Morgan’s second solo exhibition of the photographer’s work, approaching the heels of its 2013 acquisition of his archive and a sweeping 2018 retrospective, Peter Hujar: Speed of Life. That exhibition was at all times going to be a troublesome act to observe, given the size of the present, the affect of its reception, and Hujar’s significance as a key portraitist of New York City’s before-they-were-famous queer artwork scene. Nevertheless, it’s an uncommon option to mount an exhibition solely devoted to a photographer’s contact sheets, which by nature should not made for public consumption.

For these of us extra fluent in digital tradition, contact sheets are darkroom work prints that permit photographers to see all the photographs on a roll of movie and choose which of them are worthy of printing, given the time and expense that full-size printing requires — basically, it’s the equal of displaying us screenshots of Hujar’s digicam roll. As keen as I’m for a nerdy deep dive into his course of, which the exhibition undoubtedly is, I’m left wrestling with the imprecise unease that it may also be an opportunistic mining of the photographer’s archive for all its price. But I’ll test my paranoia on the door, as a result of both manner, the present’s end result is sweet.

Entering the exhibition, the viewer is immersed on all sides in mural-sized photographic blowups of Hujar’s contact sheets and notebooks — a smart transfer, offsetting the small scale of the contact sheets (all 8.5 x 11 inches, or ~21.6 x 28 cm) and alluring one in for a more in-depth look. (The trough filled with magnifying glasses to borrow can be a pleasant contact). The introductory textual content is clearly ready to reassure the cynic, stating on the outset that Hujar himself saved these supplies for future students to review and “learn how I got to the final print.” The Morgan is, in fact, a library and a museum, which strengthens the argument for its archive-forward method.

Visually, it’s extra of a combined bag, as contact sheets so typically are. They are most attention-grabbing as objects themselves when the pictures on the movie strips come collectively to kind a broader picture or sample — as in his nudes “Andrew, English boy” (c. 1972) and “Bruce de Sainte Croix” (1976) — or when the sheet seems to have impressed a repetition within the last print, like in “Ray Johnson Twice” (c. 1966). Hujar, thankfully, did most of his taking pictures on medium-format 120 movie, which means that the negatives are bigger (2.4 x 2.4 inches or 6 x 6 cm) and nicer to take a look at as a grid; the handful of contact sheets for his 35mm work (a smaller, rectangular format) are more durable to understand.

The photographer’s annotations — dotting or circling his favorites, marking the place to crop — often present a glimpse into his evolving thought course of. In “Seven-part movement executed by Robyn Brentano, S. K. Dunn, and Charles Dennis of Robert Wilson’s Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds” (1973), for instance, Hujar numbers the photographs in a sequence that differs from the order during which he took the pictures, omitting some and reordering others to assemble a smoother visible narrative. These notes-to-self helped him select which photos to make full-size (and thus costlier) prints of later, and plenty of such pictures hold close by, like Hujar’s eternally transferring 1973 portrait of Candy Darling on her deathbed alongside its contact sheet.

One walks away with the impression that, for Peter Hujar, images was by no means a matter of the “decisive moment.” The contact sheets reveal that his portraits have been the product of ongoing interactions — excerpts of a dialog, quite than reminiscences snatched from the ether. Sometimes, they betray the inherent awkwardness of attempting to coax somebody, even a pal, into revealing themselves for the digicam. It’s typically more durable to let down one’s guard than one’s garments, and Hujar managed to seize his topics doing each.

Hujar:Contact continues on the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan) by way of October 25. The exhibition was curated by Joel Smith.