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Joel-Peter Witkin Biography

Joel-Peter Witkin

Joel-Peter Witkin (born September 13, 1939) 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 dwarves, transsexual and intersex persons, as well as physically deformed people. Witkin's complex tableaux often recall religious episodes or classical paintings.

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Joel-Peter Witkin Quotes

To me extreme things are like miracles. There is nothing as boring as a person who is just okay. But I could easily live in a world populated with these disjunctive, bizarre things. . . I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.

Confusion, Miracle, Miracles, Operate, World

I wanted my photographs to be as powerful as the last thing a person sees or remembers before death.

Before Death, Death, Lasts, Powerful, Remembers

Extreme things are like miracles. Nothing is as boring as a person who is just okay.

Boring, Miracle, Miracles, Nothing, Okay

If there is pain in my photographs, it relates to the pain in my own existence.

Existence, Pain, Photograph, Relates

I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.

Chaos, Clarity, Confusion, Operate, Towards

Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn't stop on the sixth day.

Artist, Artists, Creation, People, Realizing, Stop

I could easily live in a world populated with disjunctive, bizarre things.

Bizarre, Disjunctive, Easily, World

I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of one day seeing it all. Seeing in its total form, while wearing the mask, from the distance of death. And there, in the eternal destiny, to seek the face I had before the world was made.

Destiny, Distance, Face, Hope, Mask, One Day

I've come to realize that the mark is the primal gesture, the internal connection of the caveman to the cosmos; an impossibility similar to an impulse in an insect's nervous system that it could somehow reduce to dust a steel beam by endlessly crawling over it.

Connection, Connections, Cosmos, Dust, Somehow, System

My work would have the impact of my unreality - my doubts.

Doubt, Doubts, Impact, Unreality, Work

I never photograph anything I don't believe in. If I love working with death, it's because even in death I find this power of reality that no sculptor or painter could recreate, not even a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci.

Believe, Photograph, Power, Reality, Recreate

People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who understand what I do appreciate the determination, love, and courage it takes to find wonder and beauty in people who are considered by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or wretched.

Determination, Evil, Hate, Think, Thinking

I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of someday seeing it all.

Consecrated, Life, Matter, Someday, Spirit

My purpose is to acknowledge the wonder of being part of Creation. Though I myself don't create anything, I make from what has been created.

Create, Creation, Part, Purpose, Wonder