Joel-Peter Witkin

Joel-Peter Witkin (born September 13, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York City) is an American photographer who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work often deals with such themes as death, corpses (and sometimes dismembered portions thereof), and various outsiders such as dwarfs, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, and physically deformed people. Witkin's complex tableaux often recall religious episodes or famous classical paintings. [1]

Contents

Biography

Witkin was born to a Jewish father and Roman Catholic mother. He has a twin brother, Jerome Witkin, [2] a painter, and a son, Kersen Witkin, also a painter. Witkin's parents divorced when Witkin was young because they were unable to transcend their religious differences. He attended grammar school at Saint Cecelia's in Brooklyn and went on to Grover Cleveland High School. He worked as a war photographer between 1961 and 1964 during the Vietnam war. In 1967, he decided to work as a freelance photographer and became City Walls Inc. official photographer. Later, he attended Cooper Union in New York where he studied sculpture and became Bachelor of Arts in 1974. After the Columbia University granted him a scholarship, he ended his studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he became Master of Fine Arts.

Influences and themes

Witkin claims that his vision and sensibility were initiated by an episode he witnessed when he was just a small child, a car accident that occurred in front of his house in which a little girl was decapitated.

“ It happened on a Sunday when my mother was escorting my twin brother and me down the steps of the tenement where we lived. We were going to church. While walking down the hallway to the entrance of the building, we heard an incredible crash mixed with screaming and cries for help. The accident involved three cars, all with families in them. Somehow, in the confusion, I was no longer holding my mother's hand. At the place where I stood at the curb, I could see something rolling from one of the overturned cars. It stopped at the curb where I stood. It was the head of a little girl. I bent down to touch the face, to speak to it -- but before I could touch it someone carried me away".[3] ”

He also claims that the difficulties in his family were an influence for his work too. His favorite artist is Giotto. His photographic techniques draw on early Daguerreotypes and on the work of E. J. Bellocq. [4]

Some of Witkin's works, namely those with corpses in them, have had to be created in Mexico in order to get around restrictive US laws. Because of the transgressive nature of the contents of his pictures, his works have been labeled exploitative and have sometimes shocked public opinion.,[5]

His techniques include scratching the negative, bleaching or toning the print, and using a hands-in-the-chemicals printing technique. This experimentation began after seeing a 19th-century ambrotype of a woman and her ex-lover who had been scratched from the frame. [6]

Joel-Peter Witkin's photograph "Sanitarium" inspired the final presentation of Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2001 collection based on avian imagery, the walls of another box within the faux psychiatric ward collapsed to reveal a startling tableau vivant: a reclining, masked nude breathing through a tube and surrounded by fluttering moths.[7]

Chronology

Notes

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ Jewish Virtual Library
  3. ^ Storck, Jeanne (2001). "Band of Outsiders: Williamsburg's Renegade Artists". Billburg.com. http://www.billburg.com/localcolor/content.cfm?id=134. Retrieved 2007-08-19. 
  4. ^ Jewish Virtual Library
  5. ^ Jewish Virtual Library
  6. ^ Jewish Virtual Library
  7. ^ The Alchemist: How Alexander McQueen Transformed Fashion Into Art ARTINFO.COM
  8. ^ Joel-Peter Witkin
  9. ^ http://en.fotografiska.eu/The-Museum/Exhibitions/Bodies
  10. ^ http://www.brucesilverstein.com/documents/4c59cf6dcb562.jpg
  11. ^ NYC Merchant's House Museum Hosts Post-Mortem Photography Exhibit, 9/9-11/29 2010/08/06
  12. ^ Dům umění města Brna / The Brno House of Arts

External links