Peter Hujar: Performance and Portraiture, at the Art Institute of Chicago, May 13, 2023–Oct 9, 2023.
THEY FIT well here, shunted to the side, placed underground in the Art Institute's basement, next to the men's bathroom. Hujar did his best work in places like this. When he made his portraits of New York's downtown scene, in the 1970s and 1980s, he shot his subjects in dressing rooms and theater basements, on abandoned piers and in his run-down loft. He liked to photograph dancers and actors not mid-performance, in front of an audience, but in the intimate space backstage. Portraiture would cut deepest, he seemed to feel, if it could show people in transit between their bare selves and their most theatrical faces.
The photos in snake around the room in an evenly spaced line of black-and-white prints.
