Photo: Courtesy of Flickr.com
The Paul Kasmin Gallery is currently displaying an exhibition titled Lost Downtown, which features over 20 black and white portraits taken by the late, renowned photographer Peter Hujar.
The collection is comprised of portraits of some of the artistic and creative inhabitants living in the Lower East Side neighborhood during the late 70’s/ early 80’s. Among them are pictures of David Wojnarowicz, Paul Thek, John Waters, Edwin Denby, Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz and William Burroughs.
Hujar had left his entire collection of photographs in his will to author and close friend, Stephen Koch. In a press release, Koch explains the significance of Lost Downtown:
“It’s a vanished world, and Peter Hujar was right there in it. The Lower East Side between 1972 and 1985 – filled with artists, wannabe artists and hangers-on – was a community of the misbegotten gathered from every town in America and relocated in the mean streets between Broadway and the Bowery. That Downtown is forever gone. Time, gentrification, disease and death took their toll. But before it vanished, its extravagant cast sat for Peter Hujar’s camera – and is now alive again in front of our eyes.”
The Paul Kasmin Gallery, located at 297 Tenth Avenue, will be have Lost Downtown on display until February 27th.
-by James Baginski
