Midnight Express Magazine

Your Last Stop Before Dawn

Peter Hujar: Intimacy as a Manifesto – Morgan Library & Museum, New York, USA

Peter Hujar

I absolutely loved the Peter Hujar exhibition organized by the Jeu de Paume in Paris at the end of 2019. For those lucky enough to be in New York, head straight to the Morgan Library & Museum.

His portraits, created in New York during the 1970s and 1980s, seem suspended outside of time. Artists, writers, anonymous figures, animals: everyone is photographed with the same quiet intensity.

With Hujar, nothing is ever overstated. The light is disarmingly simple, the compositions are marked by absolute precision. And yet, every photograph seems to contain an entire life.

The exhibition at the Morgan Library is particularly fascinating because it focuses on the photographer’s contact sheets. We discover his working process, his hesitations, the images he selected and those he discarded. It offers a rare opportunity to step inside the mental studio of a great portraitist.

Grégory Herpe

For all lovers of humanist photography, this exhibition is an unmissable event.

Venue: Morgan Library & Museum, New York (United States).
Dates: May 22 – October 25, 2026.

“Autoportrait”, by Peter Hujar (1975).
Gregory Herpe Avatar
Gregory Herpe
Documenting humanity’s margins and the planet’s fragile edges; from trafficked girls rescued in Cambodia to endangered lions and gorillas in Africa, drag queens fighting for visibility across Europe, IRA veterans in Northern Ireland, and displaced families in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh. My work is both witness and solidarity: portraits and stories that ask what we owe each other, and the world. I’ve also photographed icons from music and film (Bowie, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Depardieu, Deep Purple, Nina Hagen, even Pope Francis) always in search of one true perspective and emotion. Born in Paris, France, 1969. 200+ exhibitions worldwide, including the European Parliament (x2). Photojournalist with Sopa Images, Hong Kong.

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