Candy on her Deathbed, 1974
Peter Hujar’s most famous photograph. Hujar’s subjects trusted him not to take advantage of them, and he didn’t. Candy Darling, one of the most colourful members of Warhol’s gang, invited him into her hospital bedroom in 1974, weeks before she died of bone cancer. She lies on her hospital bed, surrounded by strangely morbid dark flowers, a single rose placed on her sheet. She knows that her heavy make-up, ballooning blonde hair and silky top are ineffective protection against her own mortality, but she stares at Hujar as if staring death straight on, her body still performing even as her mind wanders farther abroad.