Tennessee Williams. No Refuge but Writing. At The Morgan Library and Museum

I have decided that this will probably be my last visit to a New York City Museum. I am nearing 80 and although in good health, save for a strong case of emphysema, I am finding it more and more difficult to get to and around the City...more annoying, really, than difficult. And I decided on this exhibition as my last because many years ago I knew Peter Hujar, slightly, I knew Tennessee Willams, slightly, and they had known one another, slightly, at that same time and so I could not let the occasion pass without commenting on it: This is the first time, late in my life, when persons I have known have been the subject of museum exhibitions. But it is also an example of it being a small world. In the exhibitions there were some other familiar faces from my life experience and so the social triad became the leitmotif of the day.

What follows immediately will be notes, random notes, with a nod to Mr. Williams’ notes for writing plays. At the end I will comment on Peter’s photography.

To begin: The setting.

The Morgan Library and Museum.

I moved to New York just after Labor Day 1959. The first winter I lived on East 47^th Street near Third Avenue and then later on 82^nd Street also near Third Avenue. After a summer of summer stock in 1960 I sublet an apartment on Second Avenue and 25^th Street. I lived in that neighborhood for about four years. It was probably at that time that someone or other suggested to me that I visit the Morgan Library ...it being within the distance of a Sunday walk. It could have been the set designer I worked for: he had studied at the Yale School of Drama under Donald Oenslager and he knew that his wife, Mrs. Oenslager, was active with the Morgan Library as a volunteer. Whatever the date of my first acquaintance with the Library, I was somewhat more familiar with it in 1964 when I took a friend and his visiting mother there. In 1965 when my mother came from Kansas to see the World’s Fair, I took her there as well.

` I cannot say that everything about the Library has been of interest to me. I have never cared much for Middle Eastern cylinder seals, nor for Gothic painting ...except for its brilliance of color. Not being religious illustrated bibles and books of hours leave me cold ...although I do understand that the art of painting , in the west, began with these tomes. But I do like drawing and in the late 80’s, when I was studying figure drawing with an artist on West 26^th Street, (perhaps it was she who suggested a visit) I discovered that the Morgan is one of the very best venues for the study of master drawings of the West. Since that time I have rarely missed any of the many excellent drawing exhibitions presented there from other collections.

And while the original buildings are the very definition of sumptuousness, over the years I have come to see them as an example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s remark on classic revival architecture: “It is a copy of a copy of a copy.”As for the recent expansion, see this blog 2008, it was not my cup of tea on first encountering it and over the years my opinion of it has become even less positive: this is a really badly designed museum space. It is not an entity so much as it is now a series of isolated galleries all of them to the sides of an unattractive dining area thrust into the open, vacuous, center court. Why that space was not used as gallery space, as it had been in the past, is a mystery to me. Does New York really need yet another museum dining room? And if it does must it be presented as so completely dull and beside the point?

Tennessee Williams

In 1956 Mr. Williams was at the high point of his Broadway career. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had continued his success and his work had achieved a similar acclaim in Hollywood. He, however, was not happy. With little fanfare, apparently his agent Audrey Wood was unaware of it, he went into production for a new play, Sweet Bird of Youth, which was staged at Studio M, a small off Broadway-like theater in Coral Gables, Florida ...as per the publication of the play in a 1957 issue of Theatre Arts Magazine. I believe I remember being told that Peter Harvey, the set designer at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, worked as the designer on this production.

For most of its history Broadway has had a make or break creative environment and it makes perfectly good sense to do out of town workshop productions before getting into the heady atmosphere of the commercial mecca. Unfortunately there were very, very few regional theaters at that time.

Enter Owen Phillips. In 1956-57 Owen began his first year as managing director of the Coconut Grove Playhouse. If Tennessee Williams was agreeable to having his new work performed outside New York City, he was more than agreeable to hosting him at The Grove, all of it to be paid for by producer George Engles’ Texas oil money. And it would be an additional feather in his cap if he, Owen Phillips, were to be the director as well of the new plays ...Owen had previously been director and managing director at the Barter Theater in Virginia. He and Tennessee were nearly the same age, Owen, a nelly-assed queen, still lived with his mother, a Southern Belle from an earlier epoch, and Owen assumed that he and “Tom” would see eye to eye on everything artistic as well.

Enter Peter Hujar.

During the winter of 1957 Peter went down to Miami to visit his friend Paul Thek who was the sometimes boyfriend of Peter Harvey. Photographs show that these chaps were also friends with Tennessee Williams and his boyfriend Frank Merlo. At the end of his visit Peter Hujar returned to New York as the boyfriend of Paul Thek.

My entrance. (Ahem)

In that same issue of Theatre Arts Magazine there was an ad soliciting hopefuls to come to The Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, to study acting and to appear in plays with Broadway and Hollywood Stars! When I went to college as a theater major in 1957 it had been my intention to focus on acting. But I was given a job in the university scene shop and because I had a natural ability to paint faux finishes, the resident designer turned me into a scenic artist almost overnight. But as I still wanted to be an actor, I left college and went to Miami in late August 1958. No sooner had I completed the first three or four classes than I was cast in a workshop production that was presented at Studio M. Invited by Owen Phillips, Tennessee Williams attended with his friend Frank Merlo. The cast was introduced to them after a performance.

When the play closed after its two week run, Owen had a cast party at this home. Tennessee graciously accepted an invitation and appeared with his mother. At the end of the evening one of the other young actors was asked to drive the William-es back to their hotel in Downtown Miami and he, not wanting to sit in the front by himself and feel like a chauffeur, as he had when he drove them to the party, asked me to accompany him. And so I did.

Settling myself in the front seat of the car I was immediately aware that I had entered into the presence of theatrical legend. I knew that this woman was the model for the mother in Glass Menagerie. But little did I think that she would soon launch into a recital of her recent visit to her daughter Rose in the institution where she had been placed. Tennessee Williams was quiet and disinclined to promote the conversation ...with his fame and his personal life in conjunction, he responded as if his privacy was being completely violated. Unfortunately Miss Edwina did not take the hint. Out of respect to him my friend and I made chit chat about the passing scenery along the highway.

Soon after the workshop production closed, the Playhouse announced that they were to present the world premier of Williams new play, Period of Adjustment. But unfortunately for Phillips, it was to be directed by Williams himself. That was his only demand. (Owen was crushed; but soldiered on.) A designer, fresh out of Yale, see above, was hired to do the sets and I, with my impressive one year college resume, was designated his assistant ...as well as local scenic artist, there being no one else with that talent in all of Miami; Peter Harvey had moved on to New York at the end of the previous season.

Delighted for their friend’s good fortune, T’s chums Gore Vidal and William Inge took up residence in the theater during the rehersals to give him moral support (and to keep the spirits flowing.) In fact Gore Vidal was so enthralled with the idea of directing that he signed on for a run of his play: Visit to a Small Planet.

This time agent Audrey Wood knew what was going on and she too camped out in the theater to prevent T. from making a complete career blunder. It was obvious that they were no longer getting along; the tension in the air was palpable. (There was also tension between T and Frank Merlo.)

After the weeks of rehearsals the play opened to some acclaim and Mr. Williams and his pals hosted a party for the cast and crew in the home on Biscayne Bay of Mrs. Marion Vacarro. (Her husband was, I believe, United Fruit. She was referred to as The Banana Queen, but not to her face.) At the close of the play there was yet another party at the home of Owen Phillips, now referred to by T and his chums as “Goody Phillips”, with a tip of the hat to Arthur Miller. And once again, at the end of the evening, my friend was asked to drive the pack back to their hotel. I too was asked to “go for the ride” even though there was no space for me. “You can sit on my lap” a voice slurred from the backseat. Wary, I nonetheless accepted the offer. Of course it was Mr. Williams. I apologized for being so skinny and having such sharp bones. But he assured me that at that late hour it did not matter. There was much laughter all the way to downtown Miami; but about what I did not know. Looking out of the corner of my eye I saw three of America’s reigning playwrights, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Gore Vidal plastered into stiff upright positions like bobble dolls gurgling with laughter.

Ten years later, in 1969, a play that I had written was read at the O'Neill Playwrights conference and as a result I received a Rockefeller Playwrighting grant administered by Audrey Wood. When I made my first ...and as it turned out my only...visit to her enormous corner office in the JC Penney Building on 6^th Avenue and 52^nd Street...she told me, regretfully, that she had no idea what to do with me. I suggested Hollywood scripts, as she had done for T. No she said. In the end I was dismissed without further input from her. But I was in good company. My fellow playwright and friend from that summer, Derek Walcott, was similarly dismissed. He did, however, go on to receive the Nobel Prize for literature ...even without her assistance.

In the exhibition I noticed that prior to signing with Audrey Wood Tennessee Williams had been scouted by Freda Fishbein. In the late 60’s after I had been writing on a daily basis for several years a friend felt that I was ready for some commercial attention and introduced me to Miss Fishbein. She assured me that despite her age she understood modern theater: she had discovered Elmer Rice. For several years she did read my work and encouraged me to press on. Eventually she retired and handed me off to a person I did not care to know.

A month or so after the run of Period of Adjustment, Jessica Tandy, the original Blanche du Bois, and Hume Cronin appeared at the theater in a program of one act plays, Triple Play. I was also the assistant to the house manager and so it was my job to open the theater at 6 P.M. so that they could go to their dressing room and prepare for the evening performance. When I worked in the New York film industry in the 1970’s their son Chris was a friend and fellow union member.

Toward the end of the season the play Look Homeward Angel closed on Broadway and the cast agreed to extend the run to two more weeks in Miami. For some reason I was elevated to set designer. (I was still only nineteen!) I was warned that the star, Miriam Hopkins, would chew me to pieces if I was not careful. It turned out to be quite the contrary: when Miss Hopkins requested a change to the steps on the set, I had the union carpenter take care of it immediately. And it was done quickly and to her satisfaction. Thereafter I was her pet. I don’t know that I have ever known that Miriam Hopkins starred on Broadway in the original production of Band of Angels. Seeing her on that playbill has brought back many of these memories.

Eli Wallach starred in the original Broadway production of The Rose Tattoo. In the 1970’s his son Peter video taped one of my off off Broadway plays. Peter and I shared the same birthday. I was introduced to Eli at a gathering. He was rude.

In 1980 I worked on a film shot in New York that starred Ben Gazarra, the original Brick in Cat. He too was rude...unbearable. Later I learned that this had been a low point in his life.

In the summer of 1957 I worked as a busboy at the Teller House Hotel in Central City Colorado. In August at the opera house next door the touring Broadway play, Separate Tables, starring Geraldine Page was performed for the month. I had a nodding acquaintance with her as she sometimes had breakfast at the hotel. After a party one night during which I had played an over the top villain in a melodrama spoofing the hotel and acting company, word came to me that Miss page wanted to say hello. Shyly I went to her and announced that I had played the villain. She told me she had enjoyed my performance. I told her I wanted to go to New York and be an actor. She leapt up and shouted: “No! No! You silly boy! Don’t do that!” I did go to New York in the spring of 1959 and the first play I saw on Broadway was Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth starring Geraldine Page and Paul Newman ...out of respect to my good friends Tom and Gerry.

In his cups or sober Tennessee Williams was always a gentleman, never rude. While he was reputed to be testy at times, I never saw it. He was always quiet, respectful of others, and somewhat compassionate. He was not a verbal person. I never saw him in conversation nor could I imagine him in a conversation. Writing, as the exhibition tells us, was his refuge.

But writing is a solitary pursuit. It requires isolation and solitude. The theater, and film, are considered collaborative endeavors. Only the playwright works without the others. When they begin to work on a piece, he is everyday more removed from the process. (Only playwrights like Moliere and Shakespeare, who were also actors, have an ongoing place in the company.) Plawrighting can engender feelings of alienation.

And I learned subsequent to having known him that this had been a low period for Tennessee Williams. I believe he felt that Kazan was contributing too much to his work ...Cat was, I think, the beginning of their end. And although he had begun by writing poetic plays Miss Wood successfully guided him into the Broadway heavens. I think he disliked that, I think he began to dislike her for it. I think he began to dislike himself for feasting on it. Here he refers to this time as “the catastrophe of success”. But he did take the money and he lived well on it.

The exhibition focuses on the years of his beginnings up to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Those are the plays for which he is well known. But he wrote a great many other plays after those...many many plays ...about which few of us know anything ...even though many of them were performed in New York City. Eventually he turned his back on Broadway ...or it turned its back on him, and in celebrity crazed America without that imprimatur as a playwright he was no one, nothing. Considered a poet, it’s sad that we only remember him for his commercial success and a fame he detested. And even sadder that in a vitrine featuring his published works, we can see that they were offered to the public in cheap, poorly made editions ...so unlike the hand-sewn leather covered works in the ersatz medieval library across the hall.

Peter Hujar. Speed of Life. At The Morgan Library and Museum

I met Peter Hujar on two occasions. My acquaintance with him is one of the most unusual in my thirty years in New York. Many, many, many others came and went but Peter, at least in name, lodged in my mind.

While living on East 82^nd Street in 1960 I met a man in his fifties who was an artist and who made his living working for Esquire Magazine as a mechanical artist. He asked me to pose for him for a portrait and while doing so he asked if I knew the name, Peter Hujar. I did not. He said that I looked like Peter...we were both Tony Perkins clones at that age ...and from photographs in this catalog I can see that we did look much alike. Later he thought that Peter and I could benefit from knowing one another and he invited the two of us for a Sunday brunch at his apartment. On his arrival I could see immediately that Peter had no interest in me. He was a young person starting his career, he was visibly ambitious, and he was only interested, I suspected, in knowing people who could further his progress. As a green young thing just out of Kansas, I was hardly what he had hoped to find across the breakfast table.

I think I recall that he had a rolleiflex on a cord around his neck and that some of the conversation had to do with the qualities of that camera. Our host, Luke, had a rollei as well. I knew noting about cameras and so I could only listen politely to something I did not understand. After a visit of an acceptable length of time, Peter thanked his host and left.

For the next several years that I knew him my friend Luke continued to keep me informed of Peter’s progress. On excursions into the East Village he would point out the building on 12^th and Second Avenue where Peter lived. He would send me out to buy magazines and newspapers when Peter’s work was featured. While this man knew many people in the arts through his work ...at all levels of success ...his fascination with Peter was really unusual and I wondered if there might not be more to it, psychologically or sexually, than just an interest in a talented young man’s career progress.

In 1970 or 71 I fell into conversation with a somewhat familiar looking man in Madison Square Park who while talking began to look me over in an unusual way. Eventually he asked if he could photograph me and when I asked him when he wanted to do it he said right now. So we went across 23^rd Street to his studio. As we entered I saw the name Peter Hujar on the door and I asked if he was Peter. He said that he was. I reminded him of our meeting some ten years earlier. He said that he remembered the man from Esquire magazine but that he did not remember the brunch. He apologized for that with much sincerity. But he did ask how I was able to remember it for ten years and I told him that Luke followed his career and never missed an opportunity to keep me informed and to remind me of our meeting. The revelation that he was memorable or famous to an unknown public seemed to disquiet him.

There was a floor to ceiling mirror on the wall of this otherwise empty room and as he shuffled about arranging equipment he looked me over both in the flesh and in the mirror as if I were an object to be placed in a composition or something that could be used to realize a concept. I had the strongest sense that he did not see me as a person. After much consideration he apologized for taking my time and said that he was not going to take any pictures. I was uncertain if it was because of an equipment failure or if I had failed to pass muster. “That’s fine.” I said. And I left. He did not ask me to “keep in touch”.

Over the years, as I saw Peter’s name here and there I would smile and chide myself that I was one of the few persons in this world for whom Peter had no interest at all.

I always insist that anyone wanting to know a photographer’s work must go to a gallery or a museum or wherever he can to see the artist’s prints. In this exhibition a handsome catalog has been published, by Aperture, with the prints measuring generally 8 inches square. I think it would be impossible to complain about anything in this book. However: when face to face with the artist's prints, about 14 ¾ by 14 ¾ inches on 16 by 20 sheets, and flawlessly made, one can only then realize what exquisite prints they are and what a great photographer Peter Hujar was. What appears to be so casual and effortless in a book or on the internet can be seen to be the result of talent, education, hard work, and artistry in the gallery. This comes from the fact that there are dichotomies in his life and work which need to be understood in order to understand his work.

The story told is that Peter lived in the East Village during its counter cultural heyday and that he was not an outsider but an intimate, that he had had a troubled childhood and had been shunted from parents to grandparents, and that all of this had left him angry and disturbed. Yes, Peter lived on lower Second Avenue and he frequented the neighborhood places. But when I met him he was adept at entering into an uptown social event, of deporting himself in the manner required, and in taking his leave comfortably and with respect to all present. He was definitely not an antisocial barbarian or sociopath. And as we study the full range of his achievement in this exhibition we see that for all the experimentation in his life and his world ...sex, art, drugs ... in his photography there was an acceptance of a technique and skill that is consistently the same from first to last. It is never casual. It is never experimental. It never pushed the envelope into “new” territory. It is always familiar and it always achieves excellence.

The key to this, I believe, is to be found in Plate 97, 1977, which presents us with a portrait of Rose and Ed Murphy. Rose was Peter’s mother and Ed his step father. They lived on East 32 Street and Second Avenue across from what is now Kips Bay Plaza and even then that section of Manhattan was a middle class enclave. Although Peter lived with his grandmother and aunt and uncle in New Jersey for a time after his birth, his father disappeared before he was born, upon the death of his grandmother he moved back with his mother and lived there on 32^nd Street through middle school and high school.

In the photograph Rose and Ed Murphy appear to be middle class New Yorkers. They have dressed for the occasion. He wears a polyester leisure suit, she wears tailored slacks and a blouse. He is well groomed. Her hair has been done. She wears jewelry but nothing ostentatious. She appears to be the stronger of the two; he seems to be a man with a personality deficit, someone who can be used to fill out a crowd. They look as if they might spend part of the winter in Florida. They are proud, quiet people who know their place, who respect their place, and who have all the confidence in the world that their company is acceptable in any civilized social situation. They know how to behave and how to blend into a crowd. (We often encounter characters like these in the works of John Cheever.) I am certain that when he lived with them Peter was expected to behave himself like a gentleman, to do his school work without complaint, to know his place, to respect his place, and to be an asset in any social engagement.

In 1945, at the age of eleven, Peter made his first photographs using his mother’s camera, an Argus C3. The C 3 was a state of the art 35mm camera. When I bought one for ten dollars in a pawn shop in 1962 ...on 26^th Street and 3^rd Avenue ... professional photographers I knew told me that in the day it had been the work horse of the industry. It was not a piece of equipment an east side housewife would go out and buy on a whim ...in current dollars it cost about six hundred dollars, there was nothing automatic about it, it required that the exposure and the focus be set for each shot. Was Peter’s mother a photographer? Did she introduce him to photography? I am willing to bet that it was she who bequeathed to him his very strong work ethic: with setting up a shot, organizing the elements, shooting, developing, printing, soliciting other work, assaying the work for exhibitions, the life of a freelance photographer is a busy and a hard life. Without a puritan work ethic one gets no where. All play and no work leaves Jack along the roadside.

Apparently things did not go well for Peter at home. It doesn’t for most adolescents. He moved out when he was 16 and lived on his own the last year of high school. Later his mother disapproved of his overt homosexuality and his solution to that was to no longer see her. And so he slipped into the gay world, the East Village world, the art scene. But breeding will tell and like Tennessee Williams I suspect that Peter was always a gentleman.

The photograph of Rose and Ed Murphy is dated 1977. Was this printed in 1977 or was it created in that year? If so this is 25 years after Peter moved out ...approximately 1952-53. That hardly verifies the myth that his break with his mother was early and final. Rather it must have been a long and drawn out difficult relationship ... not unlike others I could name, many others!

It also tell us a lot about Peter Hujar the photographer. This looks to have been made in his studio. The wall and floor behind them can be seen in other photographs of a similar date. It is not spontaneous. It is not a psychological study. It has been composed. The composition begins at the bottom with a knife-like thin triangle of floor. The lighting has not been used for modeling but to create a range of tonal values, almost a mosaic of white and mid range grays. And it is very reminiscent, (was this intended?) of his 1969 photograph, Sheep, Pennsylvania, Plate 46. which is also a composition of tonal values, mid range grays moving into black and also lacking any psychological insight. In fact the number of photographs he made with two persons and sometimes animals is remarkable.(An obvious reference to Diane Arbus’ Twins, among other similarities to her work.) In many of his twins photographs the two persons are named but it is not indicated if that is to be read from left to right or right to left. Two names. Two persons. But which is which? I think to Peter it did not matter: each was merely a component of a single composition.

Composition is vital to his work. There is abundant evidence of a strong commitment to his aesthetic and that he hews to it rigidly. His compositions are always made from the tonal values, as if he had been drilled and drilled in Arthur Dow’s book, Composition, with its emphasis on notan, the harmony of light/dark. Apparently he never worked with color film.

One of the talking points in the photography magazines in the 60’s and 70’s was the question: Does one compose to the format or does one crop the composition from within the format after shooting from the hip? From the contact sheets we can see that Peter composed to the format. In Plate 122, Group Photograph, we can see Peter reflected in a mirror and that he is using at that time, 1966, a Hasselblad camera which, like the rollei, used 120 film with a square format. I suspect that he generally printed the whole of the negative; almost all of his photographs are square. We can see that he did not fire off shot after shot after shot but took his time, created his composition, and released the shutter when he saw, in living color, the composition as it would be on paper in black and white. Let me repeat that: “...he saw , in living color, the composition as it would be on paper in black and white.” And that is Peter’s remarkable talent: he was a master of composing with values he knew to be there but could not see until the film was developed and printed. Road, West Virginia, 1969, Plate 20, is a supreme illustration of this mastery as is Plate 159, Blanket on the famous chair, 1983, or Water tank and tower, 1974.

For a person who had only a high school education, he majored in photography for three years at the New York City Commercial Trades High School and later worked as a studio assistant to a professional photographer, he had a remarkable grasp of the craft of photography. But it was an education in greater depth than that of Yosef Karsh who had only been trained as a studio assistant. And Harry Callahan, America’s greatest photographer, had no formal education in photography or studio apprenticeship at all. This might well indicate that great photographers are born not made.

Peter’s dark room work is extraordinary. As I have said, these are flawless prints. (Unfortunately the museum has chosen to show them with really inferior, glaring lighting. Shame on them!) And there are many instances where it can be seen how he had complete mastery over the printing process. Plate 18, Public Garden, Taormina, 1959 has a wonderful cascade of blending from top to bottom of light to dark, as does Plate 5. Horse in West Virginia,1969, and the witty Washing on a Clothes Line, 1978., Plate 105. in which the blend (was this set up?) reads from left to right, or perhaps right to left. Dinner for Don Nice, Plate 78 is an all over design of tonal values much like an abstract expressionist painting. (There are many references to abstract expressionist paintings here.) And in Rockefeller Center, Plate 98, the architectural logic is so askew that it took me a long time to realize that it was a collage rephotographed and passed off as a street view. (Another example of his wit?) I find all of his architectural photographs of New York City somehow strange; were these editorial assignments? Was he seeking editorial assignments? There’s a reference to Berenice Abbott and Harry Callahan, but beyond that they are very common for the day: I took a lot of photographs like these and I would hardly call myself a photographer.

I am also somewhat mystified by his portraits. Almost none of them are psychological studies. Having put the models in place, he seems to have waited until their attention wandered before making the shot. (Irving Penn did a similar series of portraits.) Thus we have a world populated by persons living in a half life. I knew several of these people. I did not know any of them in this way. And I am a long way away from having read Against Interpretation, Peter’s friend Susan Sontag’s very seminal 1960’s essay. Perhaps therein lies the explanation.

There is a far wider range of subject matter here than I have been aware of. To my knowledge Peter is best known as the chronicler of the East Village arts scene, the gay liberation movement, the shadowy nights of the deserted west side Manhattan streets, the abandoned piers. If you google Peter those are the images that come up. This exhibition consists of 100 works from the collection, a recent gift to the Morgan, and an additional 60 prints. The choices here make us aware that Peter often “referenced’ or as they now say… “quoted” other photographers, perhaps his favorite photographers. There is at the opening the Peter Jumping photograph a la Richard Avedon's Jump Book. There are references to Irving Penn, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, perhaps Aaron Siskin. I wish this had been discussed in the catalog.

Many of Peter’s more well know works have attained the stature of icons. Seeing those works beside the work I did not know about ...the animals, the architecture, the fascination with the surface of a large body of water ...the rather editorial portraits... compels us to approach his iconic works with new eyes, for instance Candy Darling on her death bed. Plate 32, 1973.

Peter’s work for the most part is straight on, upright and rigid. Occasionally it is relieved by a composition on the diagonal. Such is Candy Darling. She and the bed are on the diagonal. And we see the diagonal of her body repeated and emphasized in her forearm resting atop her head. It is one of the whitest areas of the photograph. Her face is white, her eyes and mouth almost black with make up ...as she often was in “real” life. And then we notice her dark gown, nestled between the very white sheets On a table behind her, standing out against the black of the wall there is a bouquet of white chrysanthemums. That bouquet is echoed, rhymed, on the left with the black silhouette of a bouquet of roses. A black silhouette of a long stemmed rose has been placed on the bed beside her. A hospital bed table pushed in just enough on the right identifies the location for us.

Whereas in the past I approached this with reverence and respect, because of the title, because I had enjoyed her street theater, I see now that I cannot do that. This is not a found photograph in the sense of an Ansel Adams found photograph. Despite the title Candy looks the picture of her usual good health. This is a composition. It is manufactured, just as Candy Darling was manufactured. The person Candy Darling never existed. She was a celebrity, a made up personality like Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, or Harpo Marx. She brought a little bit of west coast glamour to the gritty streets of the lower east side. This manufactured image, her last, is a glorification, an homage in gratitude to the pleasure she brought into the world. It was made for her. It was publicity for her exit from the stage of life. (“Out, out brief candle…”). Peter was her George Hurrell. It is camp. Today it is the iconic image of her: most people only know her as someone who died.

Should the others of Peter’s compositions be read in this same way? Are any of these images found photographs? Are all of them or only some of them conceptualized and composed by the artist? I believe there is a mixture of both but that it requires long looking to ascertain which is which. Would knowing that help us to understand why he quoted and referenced so often.

Peter Hujar on his death bed is the photograph of a person at his moment of death. It was planned; a camera was at the ready. But unlike Candy who played a role, he was real. I can attest to that from first hand experience. His work is real. It exists on the wall in front of us. It is filled with silence. But like the sound and fury of another time it too signifies nothing. It is a visual experience. It is immediate. It is alive. And it is blemish free.

Thanks to The Morgan for keeping it going.