When Peter Hujar Met Paul Thek

Peter Hujar’s most famous photograph, Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, looks like an Old Hollywood melodrama transposed to a hospital room in 1970s New York. The Warhol superstar was in the final stages of lymphoma, a fact the image itself nearly disavows. Darling stretches languorously across a tousled bed, her face painted, a femme fatale entreating the camera. A bouquet of white chrysanthemums glares like flashbulbs behind her, while a single long-stemmed rose rests on the sheets, as if tossed from the rafters.