The Elusive Glamour of Peter and Paul

Peter Hujar and Paul Thek never look happier, together or apart, than in a photo of them side by side on Fire Island in 1961. Tall and lean in swimming trunks, with the sea behind them, both men are reacting to something out of shot, Thek smiling sweetly, while Hujar, who is hairier and rather more muscular, grins widely and bares his long upper gums in a way that I don’t think is seen in any other photo of him. It gives us a moment of intimate access, sixty-five years later, to a Peter Hujar who is otherwise unknown to us, the man Thek knew, and loved. The happiness was real, for a time, but the two artists, each with his own distinct problems and needs, were not going to be happy together, or with anyone else, for long. Both found loving difficult, Thek with recurrent uncertainties about his sexuality—he slept with Susan Sontag, their close friend at the time, and talked of wanting to have a child with her. Hujar’s personal reserve was clearly a part of his appeal, a magnetic reticence, but it betokened a deeper inability to give himself. And besides, was romantic happiness, conventionally conceived, what either man wanted?To read an individual, or a milieu, through photographs c...