Peter Hujar's Day

In 1968, Linda Rosenkrantz’s Talk was published, a novel featuring fictionalised accounts of (recorded) conversations she had had with friends. Six years later, she set to work again with her cassette recorder: she had asked a few friends to write down everything they had done and experienced in a single day, and then to recount it to her. One of those people was the photographer Peter Hujar, best known for his black-and-white portraits.

On 18 December 1974, the two met in a apartment in New York to talk about what Hujar had experienced the previous day. It turned into a fascinating conversation lasting the whole day, during which all manner of topics were discussed – from eating and sleeping habits to the position of artists in New York.

The cassette recordings have been lost, but decades later the transcript of the conversation resurfaced and was published in book form in 2022. Director Ira Sachs adapted it for the screen, with Rebecca Hall and Ben Whishaw in the lead roles.