David Wojnarowicz Photography
David Wojnarowicz was an author, poet, photographer, musician, filmmaker and painter whose work as an AIDS activist influenced his visionary and revolutionary art. Personal experiences of disenfranchisement and the stories of people he met living on the margins of society informed the narratives of his work, with identity, sexuality and a bristling against political structures all contributing to its visceral edge. Wojnarowicz unapologetically channeled his anger at the injustices exacted on minorities and alternative lifestyles through repressive governments and financial systems into his paintings, prints, collages and photography.
Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1954. He had a tumultuous childhood, dropping out of high school and living on the streets by the time he was 16. He spent much of his youth hitchhiking, spending time in San Francisco and then Paris.
Wojnarowicz moved to New York’s East Village in 1978, where he began exhibiting his art, which he frequently made from found materials. He became a central figure in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, refusing to censor his work, which often forthrightly reflected his queer sexuality and his fury at the conservative establishment. Particularly after the death of his lover Peter Hujar in 1987, he concentrated on the government’s political inaction during the AIDS crisis. As he wrote in his 1991 memoir, Close to the Knives, “To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific repercussions.”
Wojnarowicz died in 1992 from complications due to AIDS. His art is in major collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Modern and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, which has championed LGBTQ+ artists such as Wojnarowicz for decades. In 2018, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a retrospective of his work.
Find David Wojnarowicz mixed media works, paintings, photography and other art on 1stDibs.
2010s Contemporary David Wojnarowicz Photography
Archival Pigment
1980s Contemporary David Wojnarowicz Photography
Platinum
1970s Other Art Style David Wojnarowicz Photography
Silver Gelatin
Early 2000s Contemporary David Wojnarowicz Photography
Platinum
1950s Contemporary David Wojnarowicz Photography
Silver Gelatin, Photographic Film, Photographic Paper
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary David Wojnarowicz Photography
Photographic Film, Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
1970s Pop Art David Wojnarowicz Photography
Silver Gelatin
1950s Modern David Wojnarowicz Photography
Silver Gelatin
1980s Pop Art David Wojnarowicz Photography
Silver Gelatin
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary David Wojnarowicz Photography
Photographic Film, Photographic Paper, Silver Gelatin
1970s Pop Art David Wojnarowicz Photography
Silver Gelatin
2010s Contemporary David Wojnarowicz Photography
Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment
2010s Contemporary David Wojnarowicz Photography
Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Archival Pigment
1970s Pop Art David Wojnarowicz Photography
Silver Gelatin
1970s Pop Art David Wojnarowicz Photography
Silver Gelatin