Peter Hujar’s black-and-white portraits are distinctive. He captured his subjects up-close, perfectly poised, even theatrical, and yet touched with enigma. Born in 1934, in Trenton, New Jersey, Hujar was Ukrainian. When he moved to the East Village, in New York City, he lived in a loft studio above the Ukrainian restaurant Veselka. Despite a foreign upbringing, his photographs came to define the gritty aesthetic of downtown New York from the turbulent 60s to the AIDS-haunted 80s. Hujar died of the disease in 1987. This exhibition presents his earliest photographs, works dating from 1955 to 1969. On view are portraits from around town, shots from Hujar’s trips to Florence and Palermo, and candid photographs of city life. —Elena Clavarino