Hujar:Contact

Hujar:Contact is the catalogue accompanying the Morgan Library & Museum's exhibition of the same name (May 22–October 25, 2026), co-published with MACK.

Drawing on the Morgan's archive of more than 5,700 contact sheets and Peter Hujar's annotated job books spanning 1954 to 1987, the volume offers an unprecedented view of Hujar's working method and creative evolution. Critical texts by curator Joel Smith establish a chronology of Hujar's contact sheets, while Olivia McCall's transcriptions and annotations of the job books illuminate previously unseen images and early iterations of his iconic portraits—including those of Susan Sontag, David Wojnarowicz, Candy Darling, and others at the heart of New York's 1970s and 1980s downtown scene.

The contact sheets, many bearing Hujar's editing marks, function as intimate pictorial narratives traced across the cultural upheaval of Stonewall and AIDS. The Peter Hujar Collection at the Morgan was acquired through the Charina Endowment Fund in 2013.