Susan Sontag
Artist
Peter Hujar
(American, 1934 - 1987)
Date1975
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 14 5/8 × 14 5/8 inches (37.15 × 37.15 cm)
Sheet: 20 × 16 inches (50.8 × 40.64 cm)
Sheet: 20 × 16 inches (50.8 × 40.64 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Hall Family Foundation
Object number2016.75.117
Signednone visible
Inscribednone visible
Markingsnone visible
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionImage of a woman wearing a ribbed turtleneck lying on her back with her hands behind her head.Gallery LabelThis portrait of writer and cultural critic Susan Sontag, taken in close proximity as she reclines, conveys a sense of intimacy. At the same time, Sontag gazes beyond the frame, disengaged from the photographer. Peter Hujar often brought out such tensions in his portraits of friends and acquaintances who shaped the downtown New York City art scene of the 1970s and 1980s. He had an astute eye for picturing subjects who could appear at once vulnerable and aloof, physically lose yet emotionally distant.
The Hall Family Foundation, Kansas City, MO, 2016;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2016.
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2016.
Copyright© The Peter Hujar Archive
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