
Exhibition preview·New York
Review: 'Hujar:Contact' mines 5,783 contact sheets for the making of Peter Hujar
The Rail's September review of the Morgan Library & Museum exhibition (May 22 - October 25, 2026) follows 110+ contact sheets and 20 enlargements from 1954-1985, tracing how Hujar's images became icons.
In its September 2026 issue, the Brooklyn Rail reviews 'Hujar:Contact' at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York (May 22 - October 25, 2026), an exhibition of more than 110 contact sheets drawn from an archive of 5,783, plus twenty enlargements spanning 1954 to 1985. Critic Joseph Akel follows curator Joel Smith's chronological framing through Peter Hujar's world - the 1963 Capuchin catacombs in Palermo, 'Canal Street Pier with David Wojnarowicz' (1983), the contact sheets behind the iconic hospital portrait of Candy Darling (1973) - reading the contact sheet as both process and metaphor for Hujar's encounters with others. Olivia McCall's decipherment of Hujar's cryptic 'job books' anchors the scholarly apparatus behind the show.


