Joel-Peter Witkin American, b. 1939

With a body of work that is widely debated, yet deeply influential, Joel-Peter Witkin (b. 1939) is among the most singular and provocative figures in contemporary photography. Throughout his work, particularly his meticulously staged tableaux, Witkin features marginalized figures and anatomical fragments and references classical motifs, art history, and Christian iconography. He combines elaborate studio constructions with darkroom interventions of scratching, bleaching, and toning his negatives and prints. The result of his endeavors are surreal, psychologically-charged compositions that appear made rather than simply taken and challenge conventional distinctions between the beautiful and the grotesque, and preconceived notions of sexuality, desire, and mortality. 

Witkin and his twin brother, famous contemporary painter Jerome Witkin, were born in Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish father and Roman Catholic mother, whom divorced over religious differences when Witkin was young. In 1961 Witkin enlisted in the United States Army, spending his service at Fort Hood, Texas where he primarily was in charge of Public Information and classified photos. Witkin attained his B.A. in sculpture from the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture in New York City in 1974, and then went on to earn his M.A. in 1976 and M.F.A. in 1981 from the University of New Mexico. 

Informing Witkin’s work are his history of family difficulties, love for the painter Giotto, and a morbid automobile accident he witnessed as a small child wherein a young girl was decapitated. After receiving his first camera at 15 years old, Witkin went on to formulate an atypical body of work, with famous photographs including his 1983 Sanitarium, which influenced the Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2001 show, and 1982 Le Baiser, depicting two halves of a severed human head twisted into a kiss.

Decorated Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990 and named Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres of France in 2000, Witkin has been the subject over thirty published books. He has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada; Bibliotèque Nationale de Paris, Guggenheim Bilbao; Moscow House of Photography; Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago; Houston Center for Photography; ARCO Madrid; Israel Museum; Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan; and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among others. His work is included in numerous public and private collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; George Eastman House, Rochester; Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; The Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Some of his most important published works are the monographs Joel-Peter Witkin (2007), Joel-Peter Witkin, Disciple & Master (2000), Joel-Peter Witkin, A Retrospective (1995), Harms Way (1994), Joel-Peter Witkin, Twelve Photographs in Gravure (1994), Gods of Earth and Heaven (1989), and Joel-Peter Witkin: Forty Photographs (1985). Witkin currently lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico.