Palermo Catacombs #10 (Girl with Flowers)

In the Palermo Catacombs series, Peter Hujar approaches his mummified subjects in a way that seemingly brings out the personality of the long dead. His only publication during his lifetime, Portraits in Life and Death (1976), featured sixteen of the catacomb photographs alongside portraits of fellow artists and intellectuals of the New York art scene, such as William Burroughs, the exotic dancer T.C., and Andy Warhol.

As Susan Sontag wrote in her introduction to the book, “Peter Hujar knows that portraits in life are always, also, portraits in death. I am moved by the purity and delicacy of his intentions. If a free human being can afford to think nothing less than death, then these memento mori can exorcise morbidity as they evoke its sweet poetry and panic.”