One way to read Portraits in 2025 is as an instruction in how to love people through and against history: to see them in the full breadth of their frailty, striving, myopia, and vanity—to see all the ways they tried to build a better world, and failed—and to extend them grace. Perhaps one day, someone will look back on us and at our moment and wonder how we could have looked so restful and young; how we could not have known what was coming. I hope that that person, if she ever exists, will extend to us what Hujar lent to his subjects: something like forgiveness. {read}