Creativity Joel Peter Witkin, Bashny.Net

Joel Peter Witkin, - a person who can be called a madman in the art world, even despite the fact that he had an excellent classical education sculptor. It does not work in the profession and does not adhere to the framework, it - a free photographer and does what he pleases. Master of Fine Arts Witkin Born September 13, 1939 in Brooklyn (New York), so by simple calculations, it is already 72 years old, but the theme of death excited him in his youth, and old age. Models for its photo Joel-Peter finds in mortuaries, nursing homes, on the streets, and sometimes on the ads on the Internet. Among the models only cripples, hermaphrodites, people with disabilities, androgynous, transvestites, and human corpses.





Creating your own photos, he did not fully understand who he is - a psychopath with excellent aesthetic taste or the amazing human health. According to the photographer, he became interested in unusual people and corpses, when I saw how far childhood during a car accident a little girl decapitated. He realized that life and death always go together and do not notice the second is not. Also, a photographer in the family affected by the difficulties associated with the rupture of the parents. Consider whether his Satanist or prevozglashat genius - to decide each on their own, because not all strictly negative attitude to his awesome work and hid.

















Apart from me, - says Witkin, - father and four were "legitimate" sons. All of them became glaziers, and I had to help them in their work. Before you insert new glass, the old have to beat out of their frames. So my job was that I was hitting the glass. Of course, at that time we had no goggles or other means of security. As a result, a couple of hours one of the fragments hit me in the eye. His father pulled him out. I remember his huge hands. The match he unbent my eyelashes - his hands smelled like putty, tobacco and mud - and pulled out a splinter, entrenched in the eye and causes me great pain. But it was the only time we talked to him closely, except for the cases when he came to us to talk to my mother. Usually they talk about money and things like that - he had to pay child support. Subsequently, he went further and showed brought with them strange photos.






Father would call me and showed clippings from magazines Life and Look, Daily mirror, News (he did not read the New York Times). I was only something like five years, and when he showed me these pictures, I knew - he wanted to tell me that, although he is not able to create something like that, but maybe it can indirectly participate in this with my help. I looked at him in silence, but we both knew that I will try.
When I worked on the Glass Man, I was in Mexico City for 4 days over schedule because the morgue the bodies were reported suitable for my shots. When they bring the bodies found on the streets, sometimes there are doubts about the cause of death. Sometimes street vagrants are a few days after the death, and then it is very difficult to find out what happened.








I think the photo is able to exert such a strong influence on people because, unlike other visual arts, for example, television or film, the image in the photograph still. I think a person becomes a photographer, because he wants to cover the whole world and compress it into a fixed way. Just as someone who wants to say something important, grabs you in his arms and keeps looking you in the face. Hence, the strength of the frozen image in the picture.








Drivers working in a morgue, every day make trips to pick up the corpses. Found body just throw in the car, face down, with the broken nose. The car breaks about six corpses, they lie on each other, some of them are already inflated. Upon returning their pull, recorded distinctive features, remove the clothing and take away, archive records.
I was in a room with a dead man. I'm holding up his fish have put him in the arm, check the light. Straighten it, I took a few pictures, just like that, just in case. Then I prepare the body for autopsy. And so, during the autopsy, he begins to change! Lying on the table, it changes. I appeal to the interpreter - Mexicans umneyshemu man, and it turns out that he had seen the same thing. Translator says "now he will face justice. Right now". Suddenly it turns out that the man was lying - no longer the old tramp. With it just happened for a conversion, while he was lying on the table. I tell the technician: "It is not necessary to wash his blood at the conclusion of the autopsy. Let remained ».






I think many people do not realize that death for the people is as real as life. Of course, most of this is not on the verge of death. Yet sooner or later, this event happens. The appearance of bodies in the mortuary - naturally.
Every moment we are making a choice, make a decision. I believe that in every heart has its own understanding of good and evil, and our task is to find his way and his ultimate goal. Our life - a simple test, and we must pass it flawlessly.








Seamus Heany, recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, said: "The purpose of art - to achieve peace." A remarkable statement. We go to a museum and admire beautiful things because in the outside world a little beauty. For me a museum - new religious centers, or, if you like, spiritual centers for the laity.
There is a great story about a traveler who was walking through the desert. As he walked, I suddenly heard the sound of steel on the front stone. Coming closer, he sees two men in the heat hewing stones. He goes to one very, very irritated, and asks - what are you doing? - "I hewing stones." The traveler approaches the other. He also batters in stone, but quite calm. "What are you doing?" - Asks a traveler. - "I am building a cathedral».






We are born naked, and generally have to live well without clothes - not literally, but in the sense of openness and honesty. I had seen hundreds of people lying on the table in the morgue. Sometimes, among them there are beautiful women who remain after the death of her beauty - and, when confronted with this, you experience the shock. Such things stick in the memory - over and over again you see the human remains, and you realize the inevitability of the ending of human life.






And here is the Joel Peter Witkin,: