Scope and Content Note

The David Wojnarowicz Papers are comprised of journals, correspondence, manuscripts, ephemera, photography, artwork, film, video and audio works.

The film, video and audio series (Series VIII, IX and X) of the David Wojnarowicz Papers contain audio, film and video works by David Wojnarowicz, as well as an extensive collection of film, video and audio source materials produced by Wojnarowicz. The collection of source and production materials reflects his interest in documenting environments through visual and audio recording media, as well as his tendency to reuse imagery from various media. The source materials include recorded journal entries, ambient recordings and interviews with friends and colleagues. Works by other downtown NYC artists and collaborators, such as Ben Neill, Richard Kern, Charles Atlas, Phil Zwickler, and Rosa von Praunheim are included in the collection as well as commercial works representing David Wojnarowicz's personal videotape library. Also included in the collection are taped radio interviews which document the NEA and Donald Wildmon/ American Family Association controversies. The collection also includes phone message tapes from David Wojnarowicz's personal answering machine. These tapes document significant events in his life such as the death of Peter Hujar. Descriptive information for items in these series is taken from any descriptive information provided by the artist on the object or its packaging.

The photography series (Series IX) contains multiple formats of photographs taken by David Wojnarowicz, mainly during the 1980s and early 1990s. Negatives, contact sheets, prints, and slides offer different media in which to examine Wojnarowicz's camera style, subject matter, and photographic collages. Contact sheets often have Wojnarowicz's notation on them as to which frames to reprint or enlarge, allowing a glimpse into his artistic choices. In addition, the envelopes which originally housed the contact sheets and negatives are full of Wojnarowicz's descriptions of the images inside, and sometimes his thoughts about their artistic merit. Negatives of important Wojnarowicz photographic work, such as the Rimbaud series, diorama shots, and photographs of Peter Hujar's death, are included. These negatives are not open to researchers. Wojnarowicz's many trips to Paris, Berlin and Mexico are well documented; inspirations gained on these trips can be traced throughout Wojnarowicz's work. The prints, which range in size from 3 x 5 in. to 16 x 20 in., often show a variety of exposures and darkroom techniques on the same image, detailing the options from which the final choice was made. Wojnarowicz's collection of commercial pornographic images is included here, and contains images which were later incorporated into several of the Sex series works. Many prints of the Rimbaud series, as well as many copies of a source photograph of a meteor crater, are contained in this series. A numbered run of slides contains most of Wojnarowicz's completed art works and documents, along with the prints and contact sheets, of many of his installation pieces.