Portraits In Life And Death

A new edition of the cult classic photography book by the legendary Peter Hujar, featuring a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser. The 1976 publication of Peter Hujar’s Portraits in Life and Death, with an introduction by Susan Sontag, “was and remains one of the most somberly beautiful and influential photography collections of its era” (Holland Cotter, senior art critic of the New York Times). When Hujar passed away in 1987, his work was relatively unknown except for a small following. The importance and artistic mastery of Hujar’s photography, its tender gravity and intimacy, became recognized and canonical only after his death. The republication of this collection is composed of the original introduction by Susan Sontag and preceded by a new foreword by Benjamin Moser, with photographs presented in two sequences. A stirring ode to the flourishing downtown scene of the 1970s, this collection remains a deeply moving artifact of post-Stonewall New York City.

A new edition of the cult classic photography book by the legendary Peter Hujar, featuring a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser.

In this novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling In Death series, Lieutenant Eve Dallas faces a serial killer who offers his victims eternal youth by taking their life… After a tip from a reporter, Eve Dallas finds the body of a young woman in a Delancey street dumpster. Just hours before, the news station had mysteriously received a portfolio of professional portraits of the woman. The photos seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary for any pretty young woman starting a modeling career. Except that she wasn't a model. And that these photos were taken after she had been murdered. Now Dallas is on the trail of a killer who's a perfectionist and an artist. He carefully observes and records his victim's every move. And he has a mission: to own every beautiful young woman's innocence, to capture her youth and vitality—in one fateful shot...

In his masterful photo series Harvey Stein explores a country of incredible contrasts and contradictions.

Peter Hujar was an influential figure of the downtown New York scene of the 1970s and '80s, most well-known for his photographs of male nudes, and his portraits of New York City's artists, musicians, writers, and performers, including Susan Sontag, William S. Burroughs, David Wojnarowicz, and Andy Warhol. Over 160 photographs and illustrations are now gathered in Peter Hujar: Speed of Life. Published alongside a major touring exhibition, this collection presents Hujar's famous portraiture as well as his lesser-known projects.

I first saw the brave and beautiful photographs in this remarkable collection at my ranch near Dubois, Wyoming, one night when Lou Jones made a slide presentation to the young trail warriors at the Trial Lawyer's College. A silent pall fell over the small group. Few had ever looked in the face of a human being who was destined to be killed, purposely, with premeditation, on an hour and day certain. Now we looked at the faces, and what we saw from Jones's penetrating camera were not names or numbers, not writs of habeas corpus or titles on legal documents, but people: people who were resigned to their fate, or who felt sorrow and shame; who were confused and knew not what was happening to them, or who knew full well their fate and had long ago abandoned hope. We were shown people who had been touched by the camera, and who, in turn, touched us through the photographs. -From the foreword by Gerry Spence.

When Peter Hujar (1934-1987) died at the age of 53, his remarkable oeuvre fell into neglect. Sporadic exhibitions and catalogues failed to give Hujar his critical due, or to make the work widely accessible. Now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of his first book, Portraits in Life and Death (1976), a concerted effort to exhibit and publish Hujar's work has begun. This book is a prelude to upcoming exhibitions examining Hujar's incomparable portraits of animals and nudes, all of which he though to be self-portraits. A student of Lisette Model, admirer of August Sander, and friend of Diane Arbus, Hujar made his photographs distinctly his own: a perfect and unmistakable mirror of his own body and mileau.