Peter Hujar: Shamelessness Without Shame

Abstract

We can be ashamed and we can feel shame for someone who lacks shame. The essay argues that Peter Hujar's photography explores what it means to feel a truly shameless shamelessness. Each of Hujar's three major bodies of work—his portraits, nudes, and animal pictures—seeks in different ways to overcome what might be otherwise embarrassing about their respective genres: a portrait that is too candid, a nude that verges on naked, and, more subtly, animals that resist anthropomorphism, either as pets or as human doppelgängers. I contend that Hujar's unflinching and candid portrayals make the viewer acutely aware of his or her impulse to be or not to be embarrassed for themselves and/or for the artist's sitters. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's and Silvan Tomkins's idea that shame is something through which identity is constituted provides the essay's theoretical foundation.