![]() ![]() The tone struck by the book cover’s ambiguity stretches across the novel itself, where occurrences and important details reveal themselves, unfurling slowly but surely across decades. Francis’s suffering, and the many difficult things which happened to him, stretching from childhood to adulthood where he attempts to navigate the world after experiencing the depths of emotional and physical suffering and trauma. This bears striking similarities to the novel itself, where, as a reader, you feel uncertain as to whether you should have the ability to read and experience so much of the protagonist Jude St. In another interview, she again referred to the uncertainty of the image as being what makes it so alluring, the pendulum swinging between ‘ecstasy or agony’ with viewers unclear as to whether they are ‘witnessing or trespassing’. I love the intimacy, the emotion, what looks like anguish. In a Wall Street Journal interview, the author said, ‘I really hung on for the cover. The image by Hujar - who died in 1987, aged 53, 10 months after being diagnosed with AIDS - became a topic of public discussion and discourse upon the release of the novel A Little Life, with author Hanya Yanagihara insisting that the photograph had to be on the cover of the novel. This line between pleasure and pain makes the photograph one you return to time and time again. It’s only when you learn the title of the image, Orgasmic Man (1969), that you learn that the man in the photograph is in sexual ecstasy, and on the verge or process of orgasming. The expression on his face is unclear - at first glance, it looks as if he is in physical pain, or perhaps as if he is about to burst into violent tears. One photograph in the series features a tight crop of the head and shoulders of a man with his eyes scrunched closed, hand resting close by. During a talk at New York’s Kasmin Gallery in 2016, Lebowitz said: ‘I hate having my photo taken, and none of the times that Peter took my picture was it an arduous experience.’Įarlier in the 1960s, in an embrace of visualising eroticism, Hujar embarked on a series of photographs depicting men in various states of sexual release. A year later, he photographed Fran Lebowitz at home, leaning upright in bed with a duvet covering her body bare shoulders exposed. In 1973, Hujar photographed Candy Darling, an actress and Warhol muse, on her deathbed white flowers visible on a tableside close to her. Many are now well-known figures in culture, but at the time many were young and starting out in the city, trying to carve out their careers. By the time of his exchange with Rosenkrantz, Hujar had been taking photographs of friends, lovers and acquaintances for several years, depicting a dazzling constellation of writers, artists, musicians and queer life, predominantly in the Lower East Side in a classic black and white signature style. In portraiture, whether photographic or painted, a connection is often required between artist and subject an intimacy and a feeling that you are both on the same side. Rosenkrantz asks whether they’re suitable for the NYT, and Hujar responds, ‘Probably, but he gave out nothing it was that we didn’t connect.’ The experience was seemingly uncomfortable for both parties, and Hujar notes, in the transcript which eventually becomes a book, Peter Hujar’s Day (2021), that the portraits didn’t turn out the way he wanted them to. Ginsberg had insisted they take photographs next to or in front of ‘burned-out buildings’ and ‘boarded-up windows’ in New York’s Upper East Side. Hujar also recalls Ginsberg’s scepticism or disdain for him by telling Rosenkrantz that he was ‘suspicious and cool to me’, as they embarked on a journey to find a place to shoot Ginsberg’s portrait. He expresses his trepidation about the part of New York Ginsberg lives in, as well as Ginsberg’s apartment, which was ‘the most rundown tenement’. When Hujar arrives, Rosenkrantz asks him to narrate the day’s occurrences while she records the audio and, besides dropping names of peers and friends, such as Susan Sontag and William Burroughs, and chasing money from various magazine commissions, he recounts his experience of taking portraits of Allen Ginsberg for his first New York Times project. ![]() It is simple in intent: she asks her friends to make notes about what had occurred in their day. December 1974: writer Linda Rosenkrantz invites her friend, photographer Peter Hujar, to her apartment to participate in a project.
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