![]() Shortly after performance artist Leigh Bowery died at the end of 1994 in London, the first effective anti-viral medications became available and that seemingly unstoppable wave of death subsided - but many of New York's most important artists and thinkers of two generations were already gone.Īt the time there was a fear that their stories would never be told. ![]() ![]() Between 19, Ridiculous Theatrical Company director Charles Ludlam, new wave singer Klaus Nomi, drag performer and playwright Ethyl Eichelberger, underground film-maker Jack Smith, Cockettes founder Hibiscus, painter David Wojnarowicz, gay activist Vito Russo, cabaret singer John Sex, cult actress Cookie Mueller and Hujar himself all died of Aids-related illnesses, along with thousands of others. It was like a night sky missing half its brightest stars. ![]() When I arrived in New York as a student in 1990, the streets and bars of Manhattan's East and West Villages were populated by as many ghosts as there were denizens. It's a turn of events I could once have only dreamed of. Twenty years after his Aids-related death, the work of underground New York photographer Peter Hujar has made it to the UK for a show at the ICA.
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