There is a series by Peter Hujar in which the photographer shot groups of friends, collaborators, lovers and other members of the New York avant garde, from the 1960s to 80s. In one image – including the artists Paul Thek and Eva Hesse – the writer Linda Rosenkrantz stands near the centre. “That was mostly people that I had gotten together, some who became very well-known,” Rosenkrantz tells me by phone from California. “Five or six of us would go ice-skating or dancing on Friday nights.”
Rosenkrantz grew up in the Bronx in the 1930s. After university she moved to Manhattan to work in the publicity and editorial department of the Parke-Bernet auction house, becoming enmeshed in the city’s art scene. “I met Hujar in 1956. We hit it off immediately,” she says. Hujar and Rosenkrantz remained close until his death from Aids-related complications in 1987.
