Peter Hujar’s Eyes Open in the Dark is filled with intimacies and confrontations, empty lots, New York up close and seen from afar, hidden spaces and days in the country, sex and bodies, life and death. The effects are cumulative, taking us on a journey that is filled with variety, tenderness and vulnerability, surprise and shock.
Here is a man’s naked leg, foot planted on the floor. There’s William Burroughs, lounging and insouciant, Susan Sontag looking at the ceiling, a man and his dog sheathed in cellophane, like a gift you didn’t expect. A cow says hello over a fence. Caving in, door ajar, here’s a wrecked white shack, paint peeling and worn away, collapsed on its side in the New Jersey night, like a mendicant dropped exhausted on the way to somewhere else. And now a man on a chair, sucking his own big toe, an image that’s all strain and urge and beautiful contortion.
