Joel Peter Witkin

The work of Joel Peter Witkin consist of photographing people, some are dead some are alive; he concentrates on physical disabilities and strange beauty. During his studies, Joel Peter Witkin concentrated a particular photo shoot on taking shots of corpses, dwarfs, transsexuals, hermaphrodites and physically deformed people. This established his unique style.

   His images are made up of theatrical compositions using baroque influences to place his subject in his desired composition.

He concentrate’s on sexuality and physical beauty or some beauty we consider like hideous or ugly. He is looking for a different beauty.

He focuses on distorted fragments of the body. 

Much of discomfort arises because Witkin’s subjects usually wear masks, eye-coverings, or false faces. In doing so, he denies us the signal indicator of personality –the countenance—only to replace it with another. What’s seen, what’s felt? A constant pull of emotion against the intellect, and vice versa.

The Kiss (Le Baiser), New Mexico, 1982, is an image of a single autopsied head that’s been sliced in half down the middle, and posed as two separate beings locked in a kiss. There is no mask. Witkin freely allows the dead what expression their countenance assumes. However the weathered texture of the skin gives me the impression that these faces could be masks…a distorted fragment of the body. 

In ‘Portrait of Nan’, New Mexico, 1984 we see a draped woman sitting on a draped chair facing us. My eye is primarily drawn to the twisting of her hair into braids and attached to the wall behind her. We are presented with a distorted view of her body and her hair.  

He arranges his subjects to make the viewer believe they are alive, such as « Man without a head ». The question of moral value became stronger in his work especially when you look at some pictures like « Corpus Medius »(2000), a photograph of half a corpse presented on stage like a portrait sitting, similar to Renaissance. This composition is similar to « The kiss », a picture of tow heads kissing each other remind us of when in the 19th century people organized anatomy theatres like teaching events and public spectacles. The work of Joel Peter Witkin is more moral in comparison to this practice.

The work of Joel Peter Witkin gives us a greater understanding about human difference and tolerance.