Until May 11, 2025: PETER HUJAR, PERFORMANCE AND PORTRAITURE/ITALIAN JOURNEYS. Pecci Contemporary Art Center, viale della Repubblica 277, Prato. Open daily 10 am to 7 pm, closed Tuesday. Admission: €10, reduced €7.
The Pecci Center has organized a compelling exhibition of works by the late American photographer Peter Hujar (1934 – 1987), entitled “Performance and Portraiture/ Italian Journeys.” The display consists of 20 photographs that document Hujars’ journeys throughout Italy between the 1950s and 1970s, and 39 photographs of emerging artists of the performance art scene of Lower Manhattan in the 1970s. The show is curated by Grace Deveney, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago in collaboration with Stefano Collicelli Cagol, the director of Centro Pecci.
Hujar’s photographic process is a unique one, quoted in Pecci’s introduction of the show, he explains that when he takes a picture “it has its own life that really has nothing to do with that moment. It’s not something frozen. It’s the echo of that time.” Hujar’s interest in ephemerality is seen in materiality, with each dark print different from the next, and subject matter, often capturing his subjects lost in thought.
Hujar’s practice consisted of pushing the boundaries of vulnerability between himself and his subjects, often photographing close friends, and experimenting with male nude portraiture..
Hujar’s photographs also document Italy’s changing environment after the post-war economic boom. Hujar depicts the Italian landscape (cities like Florence, Sperlonga, Palermo and Naples), people and animals, and notably the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo. These works provide an alternative perspective of the country, through the gaze of a gay, American man, and surely they are charged with his personal background. In fact, his images of the Catacombs were integral to his only photobook, “Images of Life and Death,” in which he combined images of these ancient tombs with portraits of his friends. Susan Sontag explains that photography “converts the whole world into a cemetery… [as]Peter Hujar knows that portraits in life are always, also, portraits in death,” as these objects have the capacity to live long beyond the artist, subject, and spectator.
Unfortunately, Hujar and many of his dear friends and subjects died during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. This exhibition is an intimate representations of a period of time among artists, in New York especially, that now ceases to exist. The display includes some works by artists of this circle, including a video work by Sheryl Sutton, and three works by David Wojnarowicz. (Piper Begler)
