DAVID WOJNAROWICZ
PETER HUJAR, 1981
Look at his face. The shaved head. The bare shoulders. The cigarette held just below the mouth. The eyes doing something hard to name. Direct but also sort of shielded. This is David Wojnarowicz. Peter Hujar took the photograph in 1981. Two of the most important artists you maybe don't know. Hujar, the older one, behind the camera, was the great portraitist of downtown New York. Black-and-white. Square format. He shot everyone in that scene. Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz, William Burroughs, Divine. David, the one in the picture, was a painter, writer, filmmaker, AIDS activist. Pier kid. Outsider. He was twenty-seven when this was taken. Hujar was forty-seven. They met the year before. They were briefly lovers. Then Hujar became something closer to a mentor. The friendship lasted until Hujar's death. So that's part of what's in this picture. It's a portrait of someone the photographer has loved. The intimacy isn't a tone. It's the actual relationship. It's 1981. That summer, the first reports of what becomes AIDS appear in the news. Nobody has the name yet. Hujar will test positive in 1987. He dies later that year. David takes care of him through it. Photographs him on his deathbed. Five years later, dies of AIDS too. Both of these men, looking at each other through the camera in this picture, have six and eleven years left. This photo is in MoMA because David gave it to MoMA. The lover became the donor. A picture made between two people, eventually given to a museum by one of them, once the other was gone, and once he knew he'd be next. Look at his face again.