Joel-Peter Witkin - Joel-Peter Witkin. Enfer ou Ciel / Heaven or Hell - 2012

Witkin is fascinated by beings with strange, deformed, and singular physical characteristics, whom he recruits through advertisements to create his photos. These are meticulously staged portraits of people interwoven with objects in a baroque and heterogeneous assemblage. The photos are often retouched (scratches on the negative, chemical treatments, smearing, etc.). Witkin creates an atmosphere that intensifies the morbid aspect of the subjects and the poetry of the shot.

For the Bibliothèque nationale de France exhibition in 2012, the photographs are thus juxtaposed with old prints (from the Department of Prints and Photography of the Bibliothèque nationale de France) around themes of the body, the nude, death, and the strange—the ones I did not photograph to leave room for the great Witkin and to give you a pleasant surprise.