With odd imagery and amazing technical aptitude, Joel Peter Witkin photographs death. As a child he witnessed the decapitation of a young girl, which lead to his future fascinations. Witkin is influenced by a number of surrealist and baroque artists and works with the photography technique Daguerreotype, developed by Louis Daguerre in 1839. It is the process in which an image is exposed onto a polished surface which bears a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. I am sure if I were a photographer I might still have no idea what that means, but it looks fantastic. Along with death, Witkin deals with the typical "freak show" characters of yesteryears; dwarfs, transsexuals, physically deformed persons.
His work often depicts scenes from old religious sequences and also yields a very strong fetish following. I am often quite against work that stands only on the hind legs of shock, but I think Joel Peter Witkin is much more than that. His work is disturbing but perfectly beautiful and is oddly enough, not really that shocking to look at. He has come up in question often about the exploitation of the corpses in question, however, I imagine they gave some form of consent as his work was predominant in the 70s and 80s. It may be naive to believe, but I like to think there are some forms of laws in place to protect one from donating their body to science/public displays of affection towards horses. I'm not entirely sure that anyone could pull this off post Witkin, but, I would strongly consider giving my body up should I somehow precede him in death.
More work from Joel Peter Witkin
His work often depicts scenes from old religious sequences and also yields a very strong fetish following. I am often quite against work that stands only on the hind legs of shock, but I think Joel Peter Witkin is much more than that. His work is disturbing but perfectly beautiful and is oddly enough, not really that shocking to look at. He has come up in question often about the exploitation of the corpses in question, however, I imagine they gave some form of consent as his work was predominant in the 70s and 80s. It may be naive to believe, but I like to think there are some forms of laws in place to protect one from donating their body to science/public displays of affection towards horses. I'm not entirely sure that anyone could pull this off post Witkin, but, I would strongly consider giving my body up should I somehow precede him in death.
More work from Joel Peter Witkin
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