“I wanted my photographs to be as powerful as the last thing a person sees or remembers before death’. The photography of Joel-Peter Witkin certainly thrives with controversy. Depicting a darker, often grotesque or gruesome view of society for more than 40 years, his photographs leave the viewer restless at least. Portraying dark tableaus and still lifes using subjects ranging from various societal outcasts such as dwarfs, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, amputees, people with disabilities and deformities to rotting corpses and dismembered body parts, Witkin creates photographs that resemble a freak show circus from the turn of the century but are painstakingly constructed and imbued with complex meanings and metaphors behind them. His world is both hauntingly beautiful and grotesque, both fascinating and frightening”

Joel-Peter Witkin Photography / Claudia Lambert-Ng / Art Practice 4 (2020-2021)[YR] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0