Joel-Peter Witkin is an American artist from Brooklyn, who depicts, through constructed photography, macabre, often grotesque scenes. Joel uses various societal outcasts, from dwarfs and transsexuals to hermaphrodites, amputees and people with disabilities and deformities, then for good measure he'll throw in rotting corpses and dismembered body parts, oh, and maybe a bowl of fruit.
As a child, Witkin collected newspapers articles on various mental illnesses, dysfunctional characters, and outcasts. He first started taking photographs at the age of sixteen with a twin-lens reflex Rolleicord that he bought second-hand. He read manuals and taught himself the fundamentals of the camera's use. His first photograph was of a Rabbi who claimed to have spoken to God. Later he took his camera to the freak show at Coney Island at the request of his twin brother, who wanted the images for his paintings.
He claims that his unique vision was kick started by an event he witnessed as a small child, a young girl was decapitated in a car accident in front of his house. That seems to have affected him deeply, as he has been enthralled with severed head images ever since, with many of his photographic subjects being corpse heads. Another formative experience was his first sexual encounter with a pre-op transsexual in a carnival freak show, an experience he referred to as 'very freeing'.
Without a doubt the most controversial part of his art is working with corpses, which he says he takes out of morgues in a completely legal process, he then manipulates them to create these striking and confronting images. In one of his best-known photos, the one called “The Kiss”, he used a decapitated head that was cut in half in a morgue, and then inverted to give the appearance of two men who kiss.
His work has been exhibited all over the world and inspired countless people, Alexander McQueen has stated that his 2001 spring/summer collection was inspired by Witkin’s photograph, “Sanitarium”.
His impact on contemporary culture, from Gothic to Steampunk is clear. The 2011 documentary film, “Joel-Peter Witkin: An Objective Eye”, saw a load of eminent artists, and many former critics, heaping praise on him, many of whom originally viewed his work as “perverted and repulsive”. It's funny how given time, work once described as “offensive and shocking” can become “spectacular and visionary”.
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