Joel-Peter Witkin

Joel-Peter Witkin (b.1939) is one of the most well-known and controversial photographic artists working today. This accessible and affordable monograph is the best introduction to Witkin's fascinating and thought-provoking work available. Drawing as much from the art of the past – Bosch, Goya, Velazquez, and the Symbolists – as from his own inspiration, Witkin's expression is multi-faceted and rich with meaning. His deviant and imaginative tableaux transform the genre of still life by featuring animal and human corpses and body parts in classic, beautiful arrangements. Witkin also chooses the deformed, the scarred and the unusual as his subjects, reinterpreting the nineteenth-century fascination with the 'other'. His obsession with human physicality raises important questions about the body and sexuality, and finds beauty in the grotesque.