Joel-Peter Witkin

Any discussion of Witkin's work is bound to mention his uses of _______. Let's see whether I can write anything worthwhile about him w/o mention of that. When I 1st encountered Witkin's fotography I probably tended to associate it w/ the likes of Charles Gatewood & BalTimOre fotographer Stephen John Phillips. Davide Faccioli, the author of the essay that begins this bk, brings up Diane Arbus. Arbus & Gatewood both concentrate on people outside the norm, as does Witkin. That's enuf to make me like him right there - since I consider myself to be outside the norm too.

Aesthetically, though, I see the less well-known Phillips as being closer to Witkin. What makes Witkin by far one of my favorite fotographers is not just his attn to outsiderness, it's also his minute attn to details of texture, arrangement & color. He's a still-life fotographer par excellence. His "Harvest" revisits Arcimboldo's wonderful "Spring" & "Summer" paintings. Witkin's work is rife w/ awesome reworkings of historical artworks: Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus", eg, cd be renamed "The Birth of HermAphrodite". Instead, Witkin calls it "Gods of Earth and Heaven". His "The Raft of George W. Bush" references Théodore Géricault's painting "The Raft of Medusa". This latter cd be sd to be a critique of the abandonment of the proletariat to die during a shipwreck - a theme later developed in Hans Werner Henze's oratorio Das Floss der Medusa Für Che Guevara. Both Phillips & Witkin use sepia tinting & simulated aging (distressing) to evoke times past.

Despite any sensationalism that might be associated w/ Witkin's work, I find it 1st & foremost evocative of LIFE & NATURE. Instead of a Nazi sanitization of the gene pool intended to narrow down possibilities to homogenized culture, Witkin presents life (& death) in a full glory of variety & richness. There's no nastiness here, IMO, life is shown as something that grows & mutates - not as a jungle that 'needs' paving over as a parking-lot - rather as a jungle from wch the marvelous erupts & is then reabsorbed into.

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