16 May 2010

Joel Peter Witkin


One of the first things I started researching for this project was the work of Joel Peter Witkin an American photographer from New Mexico. His work is considered shocking and disturbing. “Finding beauty within the grotesque, he pursues this complex issue through people most often cast aside by society - human spectacles including hermaphrodites, dwarfs, amputees, androgynes, carcases and people with odd physical capabilities”.

His photographs are bold; they play on people’s reactions and push their perceptions of the human body. He also uses unique techniques to create his pieces. “Once photographed, Witkin spends hours in the darkroom, scratching and piercing his negatives, transforming them into images that look made rather than taken.”

His work showed me how people perceive the human body very differently. Some can find beauty in anything but with the constant pressure of society’s ideal body image being drilled into them by the media; most are influenced by this and conform to the ideal. His work makes me think that to do something unique and eye-catching, that will hopefully make people think about what they are doing to themselves, I will need to produce something shocking and uncomfortable.

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