unsuccessful session saying: “We couldn’t ‘reveal.’ As an actor you have to reveal. And Hujar’s big thing was that you had to reveal. I know that now, but I didn’t know it at the time. In other words, blistering, blazing honesty directed towards the lens. No pissing about. No posing. No putting anything on. No camping around. Just flat, real who-you-are...You must strip down all the nonsense until you get to the bone. That’s what Peter wanted and that was his great, great talent and skill.” Hujar's portraits, the subject of the first half of the one book he published while he was alive, are simple; he almost never used props and the focus of his work was on the sitter as opposed to the backdrop of the shot. Usually, his subjects either were sitting or psoing in a recumbent way. Death from AIDS In January 1987, Hujar was diagnosed with AIDS. He died 10 months later at age 53 on November 25 at Cabrini Medical Center in New York. His funeral was held at Church of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village, and he was buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. Hujar willed his estate to his friend Stephen Koch. The first retrospective of Hujar's work came in 1994 in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1994. Publications Portraits in Life and Death. New York City: Da Capo, 1976. Peter Hujar. New York City: Grey Art Gallery & Study Center, New York University, 1990. With contributions by Stephen Koch and Thomas W Sokolowski. Peter Hujar. Peter Hujar: A Retrospective. Zurich, Switzerland: Scalo, 1994. With contributions by Urs Stahel, Hripsimé Visser, and Max Kozloff. Peter Hujar, Intimate Survey. Chicago, Illinois: Stephen Daiter Galery, 1999. Peter Hujar: Animals and Nudes. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Twin Palms, 2002. With contributions by Klaus Kertess. Peter Hujar: Night. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery; San Francisco, California: Fraenkel Gallery, 2005. With contributions by Bob Nickas. Subterranean Monuments: Burckhardt, Johnson, Hujar. Poughkeepsie, New York: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, 2006. Peter Hujar Photographs 1956-1958. New York City: Mathew Marks Gallery, 2009. With contributions by Stephen Koch. Changing Difference: Queer Politics and Shifting Identities: Peter Hujar, Mark Morrisroe, Jack Smith. Milan, Italy: Silvana, 2013. With contributions by Lorenzo Fusi. Peter Hujar: Love & Lust. Fraenkel Gallery, 2014. Peter Hujar: Lost Downtown. Steidl, 2016. With contributions by Vince Aletti. Speed of Life. Aperture