Description

Paul Thek & Peter Hujar: Stay away from nothing

Paperback – November 18, 2025
By Peter Hujar (Photographer), Paul Thek (Artist), Andrew Durbin (Afterword)

A deeply intimate and visually stunning paperback collection, Stay away from nothing traces the romantic, artistic, and emotional bond between two icons of queer art: Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. Through previously unpublished letters, postcards, drawings, and contact sheets, this volume offers an unparalleled look into the lives, work, and devotion shared by two of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

The book opens with Hujar’s early portraits of Thek—quiet, searching, tender—taken as their relationship was just beginning. Interwoven with these photographs are Thek’s earliest letters to Hujar, written aboard a containership headed to Europe. These dispatches mark the start of a journey that would take them from New York to Rome, Palermo, and back again, their companionship evolving through both love and creative collaboration.

Spanning 1950s–1975, the collection documents Thek’s adventurous life: artistic breakthroughs, financial struggles, shifting romances, and philosophical meditations rendered in poetic, raw correspondence. More than fifty letters and postcards reveal the pair’s humor, longing, frustrations, tenderness, and occasional turbulence.

Alongside this written record, Hujar’s photographs chronicle Thek across studios, European landscapes, and the beaches of Fire Island. Iconic images—such as Thek in the Palermo catacombs or crafting The Tomb—appear alongside dozens of never-before-published portraits and candid contacts: the artists laughing, posing for passport photos, or simply existing in each other’s presence.

Together, these materials create a moving portrait not just of two legendary artists, but of a queer partnership defined by collaboration, affection, vulnerability, and a shared commitment to art that feels alive, risky, and true.

A must-have for readers of queer art history, photography, and archival explorations, available at Queerazon.com, where LGBTQ+ art and storytelling are always centered.