{"id":269727,"date":"2026-01-06T05:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T05:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/269727\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T05:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T05:37:12","slug":"ben-whishaw-on-the-power-of-peter-hujars-photography-it-feels-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/269727\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Whishaw on the power of Peter Hujar\u2019s photography: \u2018It feels alive\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Whishaw<\/a> is a notoriously private person. Nevertheless, I\u2019ve started our interview by asking the 45-year-old British actor how he got out of bed the previous day. \u201cYesterday, I woke up at around 7:30, but I knew I wanted more sleep,\u201d says Whishaw. \u201cI had a sense of excitement, because I\u2019d had a really busy few days leading up to that morning, and I was like, \u2018Ah, I don\u2019t have to be anywhere.\u2019 I turned over and lay in the dark for another half an hour. I got up and made myself a coffee. I didn\u2019t have any breakfast. Maybe a handful of nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a Thursday afternoon, on December 4, 2025, when I meet Whishaw and the 60-year-old American director Ira Sachs<\/a> at the Londoner Hotel. Their latest collaboration after 2023\u2019s\u00a0Passages\u00a0is\u00a0Peter Hujar\u2019s Day, a genre-defying film that\u2019s neither documentary nor fiction. On December 19, 1974, the celebrated queer photographer Peter Hujar described his previous day in great detail to Linda Rosenkrantz, a writer who recorded and transcribed their conversation. With Whishaw and Rebecca Hall as the leads, Sachs\u2019 film recreates that day\u2019s events \u2013 not the day described, but the describing itself.<\/p>\n

The result is hypnotic and deceptively simple: for 70 minutes, it\u2019s a dialogue that focuses on the photographer\u2019s previous day and nothing else. The action, if you can call it that, never leaves Rosenkrantz\u2019s New York flat, except for smoke breaks on the balcony. It\u2019s full of tantalising contradictions: a wordy, stagey piece that\u2019s cinematic through grainy cinematography and avant-garde cutaways; an immersive, grounded drama that\u2019s so Brechtian it ends on an applause break.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to state emphatically that I had no mission to introduce people to Peter Hujar,\u201d says Sachs. \u201cIt\u2019s really about two actors on a set who are transmitting this conversation between Peter and Linda.\u201d But it\u2019s a happy accident if viewers discover Hujar\u2019s work? \u201cI like that you\u2019re pushing back, even though I say that wasn\u2019t my intention. On no level would I\u00a0not\u00a0want people to discover his work, because his work is a gift, particularly to queer people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1974, Hujar is 40 years old and ascending in his career. His previous day involves talking to Susan Sontag on the phone, and photographing Allen Ginsberg for the New York Times; he name-drops acquaintances like Fran Lebowitz, William S. Burroughs and Ed Baynard. He frets his day is \u201cboring\u201d, yet his account, including the ordering of Chinese food, is engrossing. It\u2019s ultimately Hujar\u2019s inquisitive energy, not his photography, that\u2019s on display.<\/p>\n

Sachs and Whishaw are avowed fans, the latter owning a 1980 self-portrait called \u201cSeated Self-Portrait Depressed\u201d in his home. \u201cHis art will always be as if it was made today,\u201d says Whishaw. \u201cIt feels alive. He managed to catch an intimacy with people \u2013 actually, not just people, but frequently animals as well \u2013 where he could get them to be so open to him. When I try to take photos, that exchange is difficult, because lots of people understandably don\u2019t want to be photographed. It\u2019s quite an aggressive act, photographing someone. You\u2019re sort of taking something from them. To encourage someone to feel relaxed, open, and able to be intimate \u2013 that was his great genius. And it\u2019s what he saw in people as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0It\u2019s quite an aggressive act, photographing someone. You\u2019re sort of taking something from them. To encourage someone to feel relaxed, open, and able to be intimate \u2013 that was Hujar\u2019s great genius<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sachs discovered the transcript in a gay book shop in France during the shooting of\u00a0Passages. By then, the\u00a0ums and\u00a0ahs had already been removed. \u201cThe transcript is quite musical, exact and verbatim,\u201d says Sachs. \u201cI\u2019m certain when Linda typed it up 51 years ago, she removed several\u00a0ums. But she did not remove the natural inflexion of how people talk in conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had an impulse to make it more, \u2018Oh, let me just find this word or phrase,\u2019\u201d says Whishaw. \u201cBut Ira kept saying, \u2018Just keep talking.\u2019 It had to have a certain amount of tension in it. It couldn\u2019t just become soggy, meandering language.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hujar died in 1987, aged 53, from Aids. Throughout the film, Hujar agonises about his health and mortality; Rosenkrantz pleads for him to eat more vegetables. When Hujar describes closing his eyes and going to sleep, there\u2019s a poetic finality to the statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a kind of literary device,\u201d says Sachs. \u201cWe know more than the character, and that his life will end in 13 years.\u201d But he\u2019s agreed to be documented, and is preserving his legacy? \u201cYeah, but he\u2019s really un-self-conscious, which I admire. His lack of defensiveness and trust in Linda is quite deep. It\u2019s something I could never experience with my own therapist \u2013 he seems to totally trust that she\u2019s going to be interested in anything he says.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"PETERPeter Hujar\u2019s Day (Film Still)Courtesy Janus Films<\/p>\n

Have either of them done an interview they\u2019d be happy for actors to re-enact? \u201cNo,\u201d says Whishaw. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in my interviews. I really just like doing my acting.\u201d Because he\u2019s the politest actor you could imagine, Whishaw apologises out of paranoia he\u2019s caused offence. \u201cI\u2019m interested in this interview, but I\u2019m not interested in reading it back and thinking about what it means to other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBen, Rebecca, and I did a panel at the end of Sundance Film Festival this year, after having done three days of what I thought were some of the most boring interviews I\u2019ve ever done,\u201d says Sachs. \u201cI really had to rethink what was interesting about this film, because nothing I had said was interesting to me. But on this panel, I could pull away, and see the people I was talking to as people I had known for years, and learn something about them I had not known, which made me feel closer to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I theorise that interviews for this film must be different from promoting\u00a0Passages, an emotionally raw drama about fraught relationships. When I talked to Sachs in 2023<\/a>, he somehow got me to reveal deeply personal information about myself that never made it into the article; I know of other journalists who also spilled their hearts to the director when discussing\u00a0Passages.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would guess that\u2019s it,\u201d Sachs says. \u201cWe can talk about what it is to be artists, and this film would generate interesting dialogue in that realm, because it speaks about the vulnerability and insecurities that we might collectively face. But it\u2019s a film about art-making, not about love \u2013 except perhaps the love between Peter and Linda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

I think the role of the female friend who denies their own self in conversation with me is one that I\u2019m familiar with. There\u2019s a role of care. The care becomes actually their value<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When I praise the intimate body language between the two actors, Sachs recalls learning during the shoot that Hall has several close, gay male friends. \u201cI realised that my relationship to her, and Ben\u2019s relationship to her, is not singular.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do women make better interviewers?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a gendered thing,\u201d says Whishaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the role of the female friend who denies their own self in conversation with me is one that I\u2019m familiar with,\u201d says Sachs. \u201cThere\u2019s a role of care. The care becomes actually their value.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only time for one more question, which, of course, is if either are willing to describe how they fell asleep the previous night. Again, it\u2019s Whishaw who volunteers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to bed at about 1:25am,\u201d says Whishaw. \u201cI was at my partner\u2019s house, and we had had an argument.\u201d He laughs. \u201cWe watched some telly, and sort of semi-made up, but not quite. We were lying there in the dark. The argument was kind of lingering on, but maybe it was a little bit resolved. And then we fell asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Hujar\u2019s Day\u00a0is out in UK cinemas on January 2, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Whishaw is a notoriously private person. Nevertheless, I\u2019ve started our interview by asking the 45-year-old British actor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[595,365,362,363,364,601,600,602,603,604,605,606,366,18,117,596,597,598,599,19,17,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-269727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-dazed","14":"tag-dazed-confused","15":"tag-dazed-confused-magazine","16":"tag-dazed-and-confused","17":"tag-dazed-and-confused-magazine","18":"tag-dazedconfused","19":"tag-dazeddigital","20":"tag-design","21":"tag-eire","22":"tag-entertainment","23":"tag-fashion","24":"tag-film","25":"tag-ideas","26":"tag-ideas-sharing-network","27":"tag-ie","28":"tag-ireland","29":"tag-music"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}