DANSE MACABRE

Author(s): JOEL-PETER WITKIN

Source: Aperture , FALL 1997, No. 149, DARK DAYS: MYSTERY, MURDER, MAYHEM
(FALL 1997), pp. 36-39
Published by: Aperture Foundation, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24472659

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 DANSE MACABRE
BY JOEL-PETER WITKIN

If WC lived ill perfect bliss there would don between life and death. By cont
gain a clarity, an idea of how to define life. We can
not be any need for looking into the dark- sense of how life begins at a point in
r evolves, and then ends,
ness, Or tor art. Most still phot
The photograph Who Naked Is isn't necessarily abou
and evil. It's partly about what constitutes sustenanc
is, metaphorically. It is alive and then dead and then
rated into another living thing piece w
The piece is really a meditation about death. Even in
we ever stop wishing about life, emotions, and ero
see the humor in this piece. It could be seen in a sim
Mexican Day of the Dead, which is really a celebratio
Everything I do celebrates life may n
For several reasons I didn't want to show the skeleto
so I went out to a shop and bought some aluminum
some screening, and created a mask right there at th
mask itself, in this case, is only a form, and doesn't
particular face—it can be seen as a kind of Every
The figure could be seen as a person who is basically
The image needs to be read with a sensitivity and an
ing of what the symbols could possibly mean. The obj
picture, plainly, is symbolic, not literal. t
Who Naked Is came about through my actually fi
components of the picture and putting them togethe
image. I consider what I do a psychic/physical col
parts need to fit with one another very precisely. Ev
shadow on the left in this photograph was some
working with Most of my time is spent in the darkroom. The rest of my time
There are technical problems to deal with in trying to create an is sPent trEing to make things happen, or trying to find the pic
image. It requires trial and error; for example, in Who Naked Is, I tures in the worlcL Even when these thinSs do come together,
needed a medical assistant to help me arrange the skeleton. We had though you walk into a room and you see a specimen it may
to suspend it so it wouldn't just collapse like a rag doll. We ended not be £ood enough. It may not be right. Whether or not I
up renting a bar and suspending the skeleton from it. I was then discover the image I want to photograph is up to fate,
free to make the skeleton gesture. The narrative in Who Naked Is
was the first thing I thought about when I posed the skeleton. I was ^dy images may be unsettling, but I feel a need to include a cer
reminded of Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. tain deSree of detaiL If a woman is presented with the head of a
The whole photograph is a mystery. I believe more and more baby> she's g°in8 to saA "Where is the rest of the body?" That's
that my work is based on clear social factors, rather than purely what 1 need* The detail mi8ht elicit that fear and connection with
inert, motivational factors, of how one thing should look at the the photograph. I'm not solely interested in making a great-look
time of its taking inB image- That's not the way I work. I really want to create a
• ••• link between the person posing in the picture and the mind of the
Death does exist in my work, because life is a continuum and viewer that always associates with danger, and t
flows into death. I think we should have a sense of this connec- danger, of being afraid.

Opposite:
Opposite: Joel-Peter
Joel-Peter Witkin,
Witkin, Who Naked Is, 1996 Who Naked Is, 1996 37

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 I keep talking about the mystery in I think a myth about human beings
my work. I think the real mystery is T} i i • 1 • 's t'iat ^cy are ev'' or destructive by
faith. We have faith in the fact that * ^ flOt SOlcly interested Ifl nature. That is not our nature—but I
there is something that is divine. I like tTlukiflP d 2T6Clt-look.ifl2 believe that evil exists within us.
to think that we are part of the divine, o <5 o There's a choice between goodness and
because if we're not, then this life is all image. ... I TCCllly WCLflt tO evd, and I think we're drawn toward
that there is. I want to be remembered both. The question is what we can
as an American Christian artist. I think Create CI link. OCtlVCCfl the make out of

of myself
work as about
is basically a devout Catholic.
my own sense r r oAll
r \ my
make Qn bOSing
decisions aboutin
mythe picture
work °f
of faith, my stumbling, my fogginess, mind of the viewer quick
and certain kinds of realer elements of f _ think all artists have always done,
belief. In some ways, though, I con- that dlWdyS dSSOCldteS With As an artist you risk everythi
sider myself a spiritual dwarf: I'm 1 1.1 j, • r cover something. That may seem a
always being tossed into opportunities danger, and the condition of facile statem
and responding like a clown. danger of being afraid risks and real d
I believe in the reality and the fact of an artist uses his daring to express
evil, and that evil is a part of faith. and convey emotion is important. To
People might say, "I don't believe in transfer consciousness between your
God," yet they're intrigued by Satanists. But if there is a devil self and someone else is real
there has to be the opposite. If there's goodness, there has to be inherently risky.
evil. It only makes sense. There is a kind of symmetry to the dual I also feel an intima
existence of good and evil, which I think is very healthy and very Everyone that I photograp
damning at the same time. myself in them. They represent mysteries and majesties that I have
I am attracted to the unknown, or I might say to darkness, to fulfill, not through any kind of physical union, but t
though not darkness for its own sake—perhaps to see it as a way psychic one, by way of images,
of highlighting its opposite. We fear the light as well as the dark. ••••
We fear goodness, and we're attracted toward its opposite, Glassman—this guy was stabbed to death and l
which is often the easy fix, the easy solution. It's sometimes of a street, like garbage. I knew he was a punk, a
harder to get up in the morning and face the day and do what liked him anyway.
you have to do, rather than to say—and maybe this is human I witnessed his autopsy. I realized during the auto
nature—"Hey, get the fuck back to bed, take it easy. ..." man was being judged. I saw his fingers hard
Basically, we have to go through the trial of life to meet our own face changing. I witnessed his passage. His tran
point of arrival. there was a kind of a lightness that was coming from his body.
The result of what I make is something that heals, rather than That's why the piece is called Glass
something that is about the darker elements of confusion. My looked transparent. They usually hose down
wish—inwardly, and through photography—is to make images autopsy, but I purposely had them leav
that are about a form of betterment, a kind of coming out of the had the longest hands I've ever seen, the
light into the darkness. They say that the saints need to go into gers. I spent about an hour and a half wi
the darkness to bring the darkness to the light and back again. covered in blood ... to photograph him. To
I'm no saint, but I try to do the same thing in my work. I know to get ready, to be seen.
the photograph is out there. It's my job to find it. I know the Death and transfiguration. To look at
faith is there, that God is there. It's up to me to connect with it, death was close to my original intention.
because if you walk away from it, you walk away from the pur- prising kind of a peacefulness involved wit
pose of life. To connect with the highest reality, and to be part of The mystery of my life is to clear the f
it, in the most mature and determined way. to see this transition which is elusive yet real.

Opposite:
Opposite: Joel-Peter
Joel-Peter
Witkin,
Witkin,
Glassman,
Glassman,
New Mexico,
New1994
Mexico, 1994

38

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 39

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