Through the death, Joel-Peter Witkin.

by Joel-Peter Witkin

Most of the people will think of War photography if you have the topic of Death. But the truth is death is always around us within our everyday's life. A baby born, An old man dies. Things will never change since the first life. If we can happy to see a baby born, why do we need to be sad to see an old man die? But we all do, and this is life. So today I am going to talk about this photographer who see born and death equally with his photography.

Joel-Peter Witkin, American Photographer, been to Vietnam War and became a photographer there, but  specifically on dealing with corpses. May be after he gone through this hell from Vietnam War with his camera he totally changed his thinking of what life should be.

As we can see most of his pictures a like referenced from the fine art painting, and most of them are in a  "beautiful way" on showing what death should be. Of course many people may think this man is sick and this is not respecting the subject because he seems to "toying" his subject in his pictures, and most of his subjects are corpses as you can see. Most of the objects in his pictures are real things like real dead body and real twisted people and these are all before the photoshop age. Joel-Peter Witkin are also well known as a master of Darkroom. He done all his pictures by a very old Rolleicord with a dirty focusing screen and lens, and what he said about this is because he love to see thing with dirt and dust, so without a unclear vision he can able to feel more for his subject and able to get the photographs he want. But that doesn't mean he don't care about the print quality from his work, because from his book and interview he said that he would usually spend a week or even more for only one image.

He used not only dead things in his pictures and also the "special" people too, some people who have disease, disable, and even hermaphrodite or someone who have their "special taste of being sexual abuse". The only reason why Joel-Peter Witkin works with them is because he don't think they have problems at all, and from his eyes he can also see the beauty within them, and respect them and want to make they think they are normal too. One disable man, who have been work with him as the subject, and what he think about Joel-Peter Witkin is he is the only one who sees him as normal, and also the first  man who make he look beautiful in a photo. 

He think making a beautiful picture is like using a automatic camera, and this can't meet his standard of photography. He want to see the Light from his work, but before that he should go through the darkness first. He don't mind to have a dirt and dust on his prints, or sometime he even do the damage by himself on his photograph, may be he see these imperfection as same as his subject, or may his life.

I think if you only see his pictures but not reading them, it is easy to get the wrong message on what he is trying to say. But since I read through his work and book. I start to respect on him, it is trust that he keep asking why people are happy because of a bay born, but hating to see an old man die, this is life. And people should respect them all.