Peter Hujar's impressive photographic career spans three decades, from 1957 until 1987 when the artist died of AIDS. He is best known for his portraits, particularly "Candy Darling on her Deathbed" taken in 1973. Hujar sees beauty in things that are flawed like illness, death and deformity. He recognizes that it is our flawed nature that gives human beings our distinctive grace. His 1976 monograph, Portraits in Life and Death, has influenced a generation of photographers such as Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Nan Goldin and Lynn Davis. He died in relative poverty and obscurity and has only recently begun to be recognized as one of the most talented and influential photographers of the late twentieth century.