Cruising Utopia brings together a selection of 20 photographs—both iconic and seldom seen—that Hujar took between 1966 and 1985, in a love letter to his city and to his community of artists and performers, poets and writers, strangers, lovers and friends.

Hujar, who died from complications of AIDS in 1987, is renowned for his penetrating portraits of New York City’s queer counterculture of the 1970s and 80s. One of the most influential American photographers of the twentieth century, Hujar was at the forefront of the cultural scene in downtown New York in the years preceding the AIDS epidemic.

To commemorate Hujar’s legacy during LGBTQ Pride Month, in partnership with The Peter Hujar Archive, we will donate 10% of all sales from Cruising Utopia to the NYC AIDS Memorial, which honors the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who have died of AIDS and acknowledges the contributions of caregivers and activists who mobilized to provide care for the ill, fight discrimination, lobby for medical research and alter the drug approval process.

Image:
Peter Hujar, Jay and Fernando [Two Men in Leather Kissing], ca. 1966, vintage gelatin silver print, 11″ × 7″ (27.9 cm × 17.8 cm), image 14″ × 11″ (35.6 cm × 27.9 cm), paper © The Peter Hujar Archive