New York: Scalo, 1995. First Scalo edition. Hardcover. 272pp. Quarto [29.5 cm] Black cloth-effect paper over boards. 

Title: Witkin

Publisher: Scalo, Zurich

Publication Date: 1995

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: vg

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Edition: First Edition.

Asking USD$200.

Large Quarto. 272pp. Original illustrated dustjacket over dark gray cloth with white lettering on spine. Richly illustrated with over 100 offset reproductions of gelatin silver prints and a few drawings. “Witkin’s photographs seem to move in a universe of perversity and sacrilege, touching upon all that is taboo, forbidden, hallowed. They draw from the cauldron of life and death, of normality and difference, and make these interchangeable, subjecting the imager to a kind of diabolical surgery where sacred and profane, pain and pleasure, masculine and feminine are dissolved and transformed, intertwining with one another and creating a forbidden hybrid” (author).

From the Acknowledgments- “An exhibition of the works of Joel-Peter Witkin is, by its very nature, in terms of the images as well as the photographic research, an event of exceptional significance, at any moment and in any expositional circumstance. The uniqueness of this show, its difference from other exhibitions, lies in the fact that this collection of his works manages to present an almost complete anthology of his oeuvre. Indeed, for the breadth of its offering of photographs both known and unknown, it is the first exhaustive survey of the work this artist has produced up to 1995.”

Price: $200.00

Joel-Peter Witkin is an American artist whose constructed photographs depict macabre often grotesque scenes. Working in the vein of the earlier photographers Henry Peach Robinson and Oscar Gustave Rejlander, Witkin carefully builds scenes with cadavers, hermaphrodites, and dwarfs which introduce literary, religious, and art historical allusions. “I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of one day seeing it all. Seeing in its total form, while wearing the mask, from the distance of death,” the artist reflected. “And there, in the eternal destiny, to seek the face I had before the world was made.” Born on September 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, NY, Witkin earned his BA at the Cooper Union School of Art and later an MFA from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

In 2011, a survey book was published, providing a concise insight into the working methods and ideologies of the photographer. Today, his works can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The artist currently lives and works in Albuquerque, NM.