Joel Peter Witkin

JOEL PETER WITKIN (Brooklyn, 1939).
"Venus and Eros in Purgatory", New York, 1981.
Gelatin silver, edition 9/15.
Signed, titled, dated and numbered in pencil on verso.
Provenance: Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, New York.
This work was exhibited in the artist's first show in New York at the Pace/Macgill Gallery in the early 1980s.
Measurements: 50.8 x 71 cm.

Peter Witkin is one of the most prominent and controversial photographers of our time, famous for his provocative works revolving around death, religion, myth and allegory. During the 1950s he obtained his first camera, using it without any prior training in its use. Already then, one could see in his first captures quite unusual scenes, in which he began to see reflected, concerns and experiences related to his past experiences. The reiteration of scenes in which corpses, transsexuals, dwarfs, hermaphrodites or deformed people are present, is related to an accident he witnessed as a child. His photographs, since then, are generally based on metaphors about life and death, some of them inspired by ancient works of art and religious passages, where he recognizes Giotto as an influence, besides making artistic nods to the works of Goya or El Bosco, making use of the iconography of art history as a backdrop for his subjects. His main goal is to bring out that hidden side of society in general, that somewhat disturbing side that few ever dare to explore for themselves, many do not even get to know it. Today, his works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The artist currently lives and works in Albuquerque, NM.