it was love at first sight when i first encountered the work of american contemporary photographer joel peter witkin(born 1939) a few years ago.
witkin has long specialized in subjects to which society tends to say a resounding No: corpses, sexual pariahs, circus freaks, and "physical prodigies of all kinds," as he once put it.
he often claims to see himself as "loving the unloved, the damaged, the outcasts," and such unconditional acceptance characterizes his work in general: like st francis of assisi, who drank the pus of lepers in order to overcome his repulsion of them, witkin is not a rubbernecker, an exploiter, or a pessimist, but one who says Yes to everything questionable, even to the terrible. - supervert
isn't that nice. maybe i like his work because i feel a bit like a circus freak and can identify.
"we often look away when confronted with imagery of the sick, the deformed, the dead and dying, but in the nineteenth century there was a brisk trade in such photographs of "the other"; the circus freak, the bearded lady, siamese twins, and so forth were popular subjects to be collected and traded. to the extent that we worry about exploitation of bodies which do not conform to the norm or suffer from some affliction, our reticence is humane; but to the extent that we refuse to confront the human condition, it is pathological." - william a. ewing, "the body: photoworks of the Human Form"
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