“This spring, the Morgan Library & Museum will present Hujar:Contact, an exhibition exploring the life, times, and creative evolution of photographer Peter Hujar (1934–1987). On view from May 22 through October 25, 2026, the exhibition features more than 110 contact sheets and 20 enlargements from the Morgan’s collection of Peter Hujar’s works. 

In 2013, the Morgan acquired the 5,783 black-and-white contact sheets Hujar possessed at the time of his death, along with two notebooks, or ‘job books,’ in which he recorded his photographic assignments and personal projects from 1954 until 1985. Together, these materials provide a detailed record of an artist who left no written reflection on his work, yet carefully preserved the traces of his decades-long photographic life. Hujar:Contact foregrounds the material processes that structured photographic practice in the era of film and chemical printing. Visitors to the exhibition will be transported to Hujar’s darkroom, invited to study these small images with the same attentiveness and care that Hujar himself brought to them.”—Morgan Library & Museum

“Following our 2018 exhibition Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, which explored the full length and breadth of Hujar’s artistic career for the first time, Hujar:Contact turns to his creative process,” said Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “This exhibition advances the Morgan’s commitment to collecting and interpreting contemporary photography and to broadening appreciation for a medium that is both immediate and reflective.”

The exhibition elevates the contact sheet, traditionally a working tool, into an art object worthy of close visual reading in its own right. Each sheet reproduces an entire roll of film, allowing viewers to follow Hujar’s eye through a series of exposures. Many of the contact sheets include Hujar’s own handwritten notes, marks, and annotations, which indicate his changing approach to cropping and printing and elucidate the editorial decisions behind each final image.

“Contact sheets reveal an intimate history of Hujar’s habits, inspirations, and happy accidents—the intricacies hidden behind a final print,” said Joel Smith, curator of the exhibition and Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography at the Morgan. “Hujar:Contact illuminates the physical process that was central to his artistic practice.”

Hujar:Contact is organized by Joel Smith, Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography.

Title image: Peter Hujar, (1934 – 1987)  Self-portraits at 189 Second Avenue, 1974, job 620.  The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013, 2013.108:8.2110. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York; © The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS).

Images courtesy Morgan Library & Museum.