Peter Hujar’s black-and-white portraits are distinctive. He captured his subjects up-close, perfectly poised, even theatrical, yet touched with enigma. Born in 1934 in Trenton, New Jersey, Hujar was Ukrainian. When he moved to Manhattan’s East Village, he lived in a loft studio above the Ukrainian restaurant Veselka. Despite a foreign upbringing, Hujar’s photographs came to define the gritty aesthetic of downtown New York, beginning in the turbulent 60s and reaching the AIDS-haunted 80s. Hujar died of the disease in 1987. This exhibition presents a selection of more than 110 of his contact sheets, dating from the 1950s to the 1980s. —Elena Clavarino