In the same volume, Dieter Hall comments on the complexities and dichotomies in Hujar's work, saying, "Attraction and detachment, formal rigor and relaxed embrace of the moment. Pride and love, utterly unabashed sexuality and contemplative withdrawal, sustained mystery in unbroken directness, discipline and ironic undertones. No matter what he photographed, Peter retained, or perhaps one should say, heightened its absolute singularity. Every person, every animal, every single thing is unique, proud, alone."

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Another contributor, Jean-Christophe Ammann, observes that Hujar found a "moment of dignity" in his photographs. It was true for the mummies, for the rich and famous, for his lovers, for residents of psychiatric hospitals, for pets, and for farm animals.

Among Hujar's best-known photographs is "Candy Darling on her Deathbed" (1974). The twenty-eight-year-old drag artist who was about to succumb to bone cancer appears at the center of the image, glamorously made up, seductively posing, and surrounded by flowers. It is only as one studies the arresting portrait that one notices the presence of the inescapable accoutrements of a hospital room—the typical functional but unattractive wall-mounted light fixture, the corner of the mobile table on which patients are served their meals, the plastic identification band on her arm.

Kozloff writes of this photograph, "In the psychological delicacy with which he recognized the dying Candy Darling's seductive charade, Hujar took leave of all his photographic mentors, outside as well as inside the studio. Like much of his work, it is a heart-breaking picture, suffused with a moral beauty that goes beyond its already exquisite physical beauty."

Hujar continued taking photographs until he was on his own deathbed. When he lay dying of AIDS, artist David Wojnarowicz, his companion during his last years, brought him a camera so that the bed-ridden Hujar could take pictures of him. "The dying man tries to capture life literally through the lens of a camera," notes Lori B. Harrison of this image. "The irony is that the man in the photograph, who appears so alive externally, will also die of an AIDS-related illness. The sense of 'you are next' that Hujar and Wojnarowicz try to convey is operative in much AIDS art."

Hujar, who had been diagnosed with AIDS in January 1987, died later that year, on Thanksgiving Day, November 26.

Hujar was widely admired by other photographers as well as friends and lovers, many of them connected in one way or another to the world of the arts.

Although he inspired affection and loyalty in his acquaintances, many were aware of the enigma of his being able to move through and participate in various communities while still always remaining an "other," a man in some essential way isolated.

Stephen Koch, for example, remarks that "The unsayable truth—I dislike saying it now—is that his isolation, cruelly though it hurt him, was part of his strength. It was part of his art. It may have been essential to his art."

Hujar's difficult personality undoubtedly affected his career. As Koch observes, "There were some curators and dealers who had grasped his place in American photography: Not many. A few foresighted collectors had stood by him: Not many. (This was not, by the way, exclusively the fault of the dealers and collectors. Hujar was an angry and difficult man. He could suddenly lash out at perfectly well intentioned people, and 'inexplicably' reject them. Collecting or showing him required not merely foresight. It also took nerves of steel.)"

For all the complexities of his personality, however, Hujar managed to endear himself to many. In a piece in the Retrospective, photographer Nan Goldin recalls, "The thing that was most amazing at Peter's funeral was how many people came who thought they were Peter's best friend. And many of us had never met each other. He lived in different worlds, he touched many people, and his work, like so few photographs, can't be forgotten and becomes even deeper and more compelling over time. Peter's work is not just photography—it's about birth and death and the stages of life and variety of identity and all the friends in between."

In response to the AIDS epidemic, a number of activist groups, including Gran Fury and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, have used art as a means to raise awareness about the epidemic.

After Stonewall, American gay male art underwent a radical transformation as artists came out and began to treat gay themes openly and directly.

Post-Stonewall gay male photography merits recognition for its contribution to fine art, documentation, photo-journalism, and advertising, as well as erotica.

Throughout much of history, the nude male figure was virtually the only subject that could be used to articulate homoerotic desire in publicly displayed works of art, as well as those works of art intended for private "consumption."

Although art historians have given very little attention to representations of sex workers, images of same-sex prostitution extend far back into history.

American photographer Berenice Abbott made memorable images of lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men in Paris in the 1920s and in New York from the 1930s through 1965.

The celebrated British photographer Cecil Beaton described himself as a "terrible, terrible homosexualist," but may be best known for his relationship with Greta Garbo.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the photographs of Joan Elizabeth Biren, better known as JEB, defined and set the standard for lesbian feminist image making in the United States.

A versatile character actor, nightclub singer, and international cult star who generally performed his stage show and movie roles in drag, Divine became famous through his appearances in John Waters' films.

New Orleans artist George Dureau is best known for his male figure studies and narrative paintings in oil and charcoal and for his black-and-white photographs, which often feature street youths, dwarfs, and amputees.

An influential figure in experimental theater, writer and drag performer Ethyl Eichelberger is most remembered for his repertoire of self-penned solo plays based on the lives of the great women of history, literature, and myth.

Formed soon after the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the short-lived but influential Gay Liberation Front brought a new militancy to the movement that became known as gay liberation.

Perhaps the most famous of contemporary American photographers, Annie Leibovitz has evolved a personal style characterized by imaginative poses, bright colors, and intense lighting.

An innovator in the "Theater of the Ridiculous," actor and playwright Charles Ludlam drew on many elements of camp and farce, but never allowed them to obscure the seriousness of his themes.

American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's controversial images typically combine rigorously formal composition and design with extreme subject matter.

Acclaimed for his artistic and insightful images, many of them in black and white, American photographer Herb Ritts infused his work with homoeroticism and "homosexual iconography."

Photographer Jack Robinson came to prominence as a result of the stunning fashion and celebrity photographs he shot for magazines in the 1960s, but he also created significant images that document the gay subculture of New Orleans in the 1950s.

Best known for his work in fashion and for his magazine covers, American photographer Francesco Scavullo was also a masterful portrait photographer.

The uncompromising, poetic imagery of American photographer Arthur Tress is the stuff of dreams, called forth from the artist's reckoning with the world and his place in it.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, poet, painter, and activist Fran Winant helped define the role and sensibility of lesbians in the contexts of gay liberation and radical feminism.

The first gay American artist to respond to the AIDS crisis with anger and moral outrage, David Wojnarowicz used his art as a polemical tool with which to indict those he held responsible for the AIDS epidemic and to document his own suffering.