>I never photograph anything I don’t believe in. If I love working with death, it’s because even in death I find this power of reality that no sculptor or painter could recreate, not even a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci.
>OK, well, my photographs are not “morbid.” Morbid means unhealthy and deformed. I photograph social outcasts because I want to celebrate their singularity and the strength it takes for them to engage life. An example is a photograph called “Un Santo Oscuro,” a man born in Canada because his mother took thalidomide, which was banned in the United States under the Kennedy administration. He’s born without skin, and without arms or legs. He’s in pain from the moment he was born. As a child, he was a sideshow freak. I had a friend in L.A. who saw him begging on the sidewalk. My friend was overwhelmed. He told me about him on the phone. I got on a plane to L.A., to convince this man to be photographed. I was very struck and emotionally engaged in photographing him. It’s titled “Un Santo Oscuro,” or “The Obscure Saint.” Again, what I want to say is: I don’t work in the world. I work from what the world gives me as far as ideas and emotions.
>I don’t photograph “perverse” things, because that means the celebration of perverted intentions. Instead, I celebrate the courage to live, especially the courage to live through the struggles we’ve been given in life. There’s always the negative connotation when people see my work. They think that I’m taking advantage of situations. They think I’m taking advantage of people who are a certain way, and may live lives that they would be frightened of if they had to live them. There’s a lot of mixed baggage out there as far as how my photographs are perceived. That’s normal and natural in the history of art, especially with photography because it’s closer to the reality we all can see and understand. What I want to do is make photographs that are made like no other photographs. That’s the criteria of all art regardless of medium.
>For me, the most important and beautiful photographs are the daguerreotype and older methods.>To acknowledge that beauty, I make my work in that manner. Not because I want the photographs to look old, it’s because I want that wonderment of newness in a photographic reality, which I prefer over the dull, modern look of what you have to work with in paper. I have reverence for the prints. I first make a master print, and when I make an edition, the edition must match the master print.
>First, I’m not comfortable with the title “freaks.” It’s a terrible, sensationalistic term. Thank God there are no more Freak Shows. When I was in my teens, I would go to Conny Island with my brother to photograph people. The barker, the man that tries to get people in the show, was telling a lot of the people, “Unless you live good lives, your children are going to look like the people in here.” It was a cruel, stupid, primitive thing to say.>I can’t be cornered, like many artists – there is no A, B, C, D, to my work. Some artists deal in cyclical things, but for me, it’s never been that clear, because I photograph people who all have different characteristics and consciousness. I never know who I’m going to meet. I work with those people - I don’t use them. The same thing applies to human remains or inanimate objects.>My work isn’t linear; it’s more of a phenomenology.
>I go against that [the reproducibility of photography]. In my case, I want to impose my hand on the photograph. I want people to know that I’m not relying on the “decisive moment.” The negative is a beginning point for me. I’m a print maker as much as I am a photographer.>I have to know every square centimeter of the print. It takes me days, sometimes weeks or months to resolve an image. For sales, I keep an atlas of how I made the prints, but I have to begin the whole process of discovering what that image was about. My thoughts go back to that time and I have to relive those emotions.
>There are two things I live for: my religious faith and my engagement with life through photography.
>The flesh is the clothes of our corporal existence. It identifies us whether we carry it well, or if we’re born with physical problems. All of us, from a theological standpoint, have liabilities and gifts that we have to deal with in life. We have to accept the pain as discovery.
>I went to Cooper Union first, and I knew from the get-go, because I was usually older than the teachers, that art can’t be taught. Either you have the flame of passion or the spark of interest, or you don’t. A fraction of one percent of all graduate students in studio art actually live a life of working that way full time. It’s a hard trip. But I’ve always been impassioned. I’ve always done what I’ve wanted to do. The definition of all artists, actually the definition of all human beings, is to inform yourself of why we’re here, what our purpose in life is, and how to make life better. We have to ask the profound questions. Am I an atheist? Am I a religious believer? Or is life just a crazy conglomeration of planetary movements that made us and made time and space, and we live a life of futility? I’ve tried living that way, and it didn’t work. I don’t like futility or anything nihilistic. I like things that are human and positive. Otherwise, it’s all self-involvement, and it’s all escapist, and it’s all meaningless. I’m not just a spiritual person. I’m a religious person. That’s another reason why I photograph death. I think death is the doorway to eternal life, and we have to die to get there. I believe we are given life to make life better, to find our spirits, and to nurture each other. Then that’s over with, as it will be with me pretty soon. I have maybe 10 or 20 years left. And I’m going to die in the darkroom, printing.
>Abortion is a divisive subject right now. I’m a Democrat and I disagree with some of what Obama talks about. This is not respect for life. In fact, I think life comes at conception and I believe that we have souls. How can a mother destroy life in her body? The primary reason was scientific, but what it’s doing, and the mother knows this, is cutting the fetus up and destroying it. It’s a form of killing that people don’t stand up for.>Islam, like Christianity, wants to spread its message and convert the whole world. I think there will eventually be a war between those two beliefs. It’s a terrible thing. I always say, we can put a person on the moon, but every three seconds a child dies of starvation. That is criminal.
>Sure [there are a lot of misinterpretations of my work]. Because people have different baggage. Especially in this time, when people see something, they see it at face value. When you look back on art history, a person like Max Beckman, James Ensor, even Emile Nolde, were making different forms of painting or, in their case, picturing life. Basically, good things are defeated. Beckman’s famous painting “The Night,” is about the terror, and obviously we’re going through a terror now too, which is very damaging and reflects all the problems of imperialism in the 18th and 19th century. My work is loved by people who have a historical connoisseurship. I work on a level that invites challenge. It’s not “nicey nicey” art. It’s not the art that goes over most people’s sofas in their living room. It’s an art that informs, very much like the art of a writer.
>I think the job of art is to create a language that people can understand.
>I love Giotto. He basically invented Western painting. My deepest intention, if I were doing a better job (maybe I’ll do that in the coming years before I leave this reality) is to make work like Giotto. Regardless of what the subject matter is, even though I have dramatic subject matter, as he did, I want people to think and know that there is something clear, and profound, and immediate happening. Maybe it’s because we’re living in the same time, and we’re sharing those experiences and we’re not removed enough. A lot in the visual arts is conditioned by the art market. You have a disparity of wealth, and a lot of people who have wealth do not have the aesthetic depth to understand. They want trophies. They want what’s in the art books. I make the work because I care, and I have to express that. I’ve done it so long that I see the change in myself. That sustains me. Every morning when I wake up, I’m thinking of making photographs. Every night when I go to bed, I’m thinking of making photographs. This doesn’t mean I’m obsessive. It means the deepest desire of my life is to express myself this way.
>>4521663Top tier tits bottom left bitchLooks like some death metal album cover drawing, photo equivalent
>With the economy going down, I couldn’t live on the sales of my work. I’m out of fashion because my work is about morality. It’s about human life and it doesn’t show the prettiness, or escapism, or the caricature of feminism that someone like Cindy Sherman. There is nothing wrong with feminism, but right now in New York, if you’re a woman, you have an advantage, and if you’re a guy who is half Jewish and makes meaningful images, people don’t want to know about it.
>The difference is that in Europe, people are far more cultured; they are loyal to their artists, which isn’t always a good thing. They have a depth. I’ve seen families at my shows explaining to their kids some of my toughest works, like Feast of Fools. In the United States, that wouldn’t be tolerated.
>I’ve been signing books with an Irish saying: “We are all disguised as ourselves.” It’s a wonderful thing. That saying is in 50-60 books. It’s a gracious way of defining the human element.
>Fat ugly deformed people in lingerie, disease and abstraction, corpses, death with the occasional highly sexually desirable white whore thrown in, what is sacred is profane, what is profane is sacred>make it back & white >I am..le artisteDeath to all Jews
>>4521678What is sacred is profane, and what is profane is sacred.Death to the concept of beauty.
>>4521707>>4521678Its not a jew thing its an atheist pseud thing Atheists killed more people than islam. Atheists love death and destruction. Its their real god. Good art is made by theistsBad art “that actually has intellectual value because uhhhhh the theory of post whatever art school circlejerkism” is made by atheists that were too retarded to be lawyers or scientists
>>4521707>>4521710You're both cringe and miss the point of the artwork entirely.
>>4521734The point of art is to reveal ther divine harmonies that make up creation and bring people together and closer to God. Art is worship. Art is direct to the soul. If art is not for God, what is it for in God’s stead? What do you worship other than God? We know by your fruits. >inb4 christian society oppresses womyn, lgbtq, and furries :(
>>4521736>christian societies don't have functional 100GbE backboneSorry, I'll pass on the boyfucking theocracy especially if it means I get modern infrastructure.
You know I just.... Don't like demonic ugly imagery! I know, I know, everyone is into their tarot cards and crystals but I'm just ... Not going to side with demons! Sorry!
>>4521660These are very interesting photographs. I think they live by the principle that an art piece is equal to its impact value. That there's beaty in the ugliness, light in the dark, absurdity in the motifs and whole lot to suffering.
>>4521875This gross stuff is routine by now. I don't think there is any impact. This has become the default "art".>>4521736You really can't say that and post AI slop
>>4521759I HATE THE ANTICHRIST!
>>4521710"it's not a jew thing">the photographer is jewish
>>4521875A heap of human shit on a dinner plate with a daffodil placed in it has the exact same merit as everything else in this thread. Oh don't forget the black & white to remind everyone its high brow.
Didn't read the green texts but these all suck IMO
>>4522780Why do you say that?
Errytime
>>4521747>I reject your boyfucking theocracy and substitute my own!
I really like his work. People often times try to pawn him off as a mere shock artist, which just exposes their own retardation. Clearly a lot of artistry goes into his shots. The mis en scene in something like >>4521663 is leagues ahead of any snapshit of a dog or flower posted on this board.
>>4522797I was just about say, "this looks fucking jewish".
>>4521710>>4521736>Art is what I say it is, and nothing else>>4521759>>4521900>Is that something visually challenging? Ahhh save me Jesus the devil is here!>>4521678>>4522705>>4522797>>4522849>I'm a braindead antisemite, please pay attention to meIt's a shame this board is so stupid. Ty for at least trying to start a discussion on photography OP
>>4522856>excuse me but in art school the art experts told me that there is beauty in the ugly and art is about what it makes you feel so shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, and listen to the people who made up new rules so their mentally ill cousins could have lucrative careers. did YOU buy an art degree? did YOU invent a genre of antitheist postmodern philosophy under which we can not prohibit murder, eat meat, and have closed national borders with any degree of ethical consistency? no! listen to the EXPERTS. learn the tradition, the zeitgeist, the conventions! the subculture of academia is the culture!As a Jew, shut up. Art school is where idiots go to pretend to be smarter than a 4chan poster and write /lit/ shitposts for a living. Witkin is garbage. Most museum photography is garbage. Most modernism is made up garbage that justifies careers better than it seeks truth. Modernist architecture is bad enough to cause developmental delays. Modern art is disgusting. Everything you americans and your apostate friends have redefined and made up was wrong>but subjectively… relatively… you cant logically prove life is like real man… ;_;I am sick of the influence of americans>dajoosExclusively american ones doing the same shit as all you other tasteless yanks, now with flowery language to make an impression on followers like you. And you shits got the idea (all your ideas really) from the french so don’t you pin this oeuvre d’caca on Jews. Witkin just flat out does not and has never made art. He put a lot of effort into making ugly photographs. Art is beauty. Only beauty. Positive beauty. Not maggots on a corpse as social commentary to really make you think.
>>4522857idk I think some of them are beautiful
>>4522860Either you only looked at thumbnails or you’re spiritually an aztec priest
>>4522857Sounds like someone applied to an art school, but got rejected... Following the leader I guess.
>>4522857I don't disagree that most modern art philosophy is flimsy pseudointellectual nonsense meant to trick rich idiots into trafficking junk made by hacks. I do disagree that art should be only positive beauty. Life in this world means accepting the decay and corruption along with the joy and affirmation. Your philosophy that we should all close our eyes, plug our ears and sing kumbaya speaks more to your own fear and immaturity than anything else. Oh, your "taste" is happy things that make you smile? What unique and well-developed "taste" you have. You're so qualified to be a thought leader in the art world.>>4522860I also find several of these to be beautiful. Not so much a fan of the guy's nuts tied to a counterweight, but I do like these.>>4521668>>4521671>>4521673
>>4522865> Life in this world means accepting the decay and corruptionSolemnly, not hanging it on your wall and calling it art. Being edgy doesn’t make you mature. It’s the primary personality of 14 year olds who hate their parents. I reject ugliness. I reject glorifying the darkness. I reject a man who plays with human remains so he cam make money without doing real work. Fuck witkin.
Every body part in this freaks photos was someone’s child. Now they’re just parts of a mentally ill glowie’s ego show. If this doesn’t disgust you i hope your still recognizable body is used to make a photo of a corpse getting buttfucked by a skeleton horse and your family has to see it.
>>4522868Art is an act of speaking on something. We have to speak on ugliness and darkness. We can't ignore them and sweep them under the rug, or we'll just break down when we're inevitably faced with them. Art should absolutely deal with these subjects, and it can be done without glorifying them. Would I ever do what this guy does? Fuck no. Am I upset that this work exists? Not at all.
>>4522873Speaking is speaking. Art is beauty. Good aesthetics. Fuck your romantic rant. >we have to desecrate corpses for ugly photos and make statues of deformed fat fucks or we’ll heccin crumbleNo ugly shit on walls. Save the ugly for more respectful and mature discourse than this masturbatory bullshit. Art is art. Discourse is discourse. If art is discourse, it ceases to be art, and all art is suspect and the world must get uglier forever (the material dark is infinite, the material light is finite, the immaterial light is infinite, the immaterial dark is finite), just because you wanted to sound clever. Therefore your bs is rejected all the way back to whatever terrible french retarde set this in motion. Or your bs could be conquered by the infinite and immaterial light - the almighty. Indeed. Theocracy solves many idiocies.
>>4522857bolshevik marxist filth went to war on objective standards, and they've largely won. Now we're here.
>>4522875There were always servants of the infinite darkness of the material.We just stopped believing in the infinite immaterial good, so we lost the strength to elevate what good is in this world above the endless, lifeless, and all consuming.
>>4522874Must be convenient not to have to think too hard about these things. Unfortunately theocracy doesn't solve anything, it's just one easy answer and a nice excuse to write off anyone that disagrees with you. Not sure which fun flavor of god botherer you are, but I've read my share of old religious texts. Talk about an ugly world.
>>4522877>i put ugly shit on a wall and defiled corpses. i think hard! im smart because im not doing what other people are doing!Sure, and “can animals consent” is a really difficult subject for real intellectuals to consider. Theocracy is created for people like you. Its brutality is for people like you. And it can work really well since there aren’t many other ways to convince the delusional, except with a superior breed of nonsense.
>>4522857A lotta words to say "well I just don't like it">Art is beauty. Only beauty. Positive beauty.So Saturn eating his son isn't art?
>>4522891Correct it’s a graven image. Fuck saturn! All my homies hate saturn
>>4522892You talk about thinking like it's a bad thing. It's very telling.
>>4522906>i ate a plate of shit to THINK about the INTERESTING flavors. Ya got a problem with that ya fuckin anti-intellectual philistine? Hey waiter, get me another! You’re leaving dimensions of human experience on the table ya cuisine hating fuckwit. Hey this one’s got corn in it - delicious!>-modern art
>>4522908I see. Those that think differently from you eat poo poo. My mistake, I see now how enlightened and spiritually awake you are. The almighty creator of the universe must be very proud of you in particular.
>>4522910You’re defending a fed defiling corpses like it’s the only if not most intellectual way to approach death.
>>4522891Art is what wouldn't have the same impact if it were even slightly differentIn other word something that resides in the small marginthe higher the possible margin of error the superior the artif le faggot kike had moved some shit around composition wise in most of his pieces they'd stiil be equally putridNow look at them paintings of satrn were they composed differently their impact would be off the mark of what we can assume the master painter was aiming forGood artists are like precise reiflemen who hit exacty where they intend to regardless of if its beauty/uglinessle Faggot Kike modern artists are akin to retards chucking dynamite into the random ponds and claiming every dead fish as an intended target
>>4522954You're so close to getting it. Now apply the same thought process to this work. Would it have the same impact if he didn't use actual corpses? Could that be the reason he does it? Try to think beyond "But I don't like it" for a second.
>>4522958>Would it have the same impact...?Disgust? Yes, and it would warrant even more mockery for a failure to commit. Sounds like a losing battle either way - I would rather make art.
>>4522797>>4522849>he's jewish, that explains the demonic imagery>ignoring the catholic obsession with corpses & graven images
>>4523526Santeria and Santa Muerte is not Catholic. It's demonic
>>4523548you know what I meant
>>4523591I addressed what you meant and you're wrong
>>4523591Like drinking blood, relics, and having the symbol of the religion be god/son of god/ holy ghost getting executed in an incredibly brutal manner?
>>4521675>if you’re a guy who is half Jewish and makes meaningful images, people don’t want to know about it.lol. lying kike. half these are just deformity porn
>>4523548>he doesnt know about all the other catholicsYou display a shriveled foreskin in the vatican because you think it might belong to jesus lolEver been to that gilded pagan temple? It’s not all stolen statues and paintings with am errant foreskin. They have mummies and bones on display yo. Did you also forget the thousands of years christians spent painting realistic scenes of eternal demonic torment?Witkin’s photography is peak christian art.>but he’s half jewishSo is christianity lol. There’s the jewish half (the tanakh, jesus, the apostles, and revelations echoing the dead sea scrolls) and then the uh, other half (the vatican, haunted statues, pentecostal snake charmers, faith heaing and other magic shows)
>>4523665Jew in the modern sense is what the Bible calls "the synagogue of Satan" and "pharisees". The ones we call jews nowadays are the same people who killed Jesus.
>>4523667Christian identity shit is nonsense. The genetics and history are pretty clear. Europeans = R1B (non-aryan whites)Israel = R1A (jews, turks, greeks, and other aryans)Edom/pharisees herod etc = J1/J2 (honorary jews)
>I photograph social outcasts because I want to celebrate their singularity and the strength it takes for them to engage life.Sad to know that 'artist statement-speak' BS is so prevalent even with this guy.>Instead, I celebrate the courage to live, especially the courage to live through the struggles we’ve been given in life. Word salad.>The barker, the man that tries to get people in the show, was telling a lot of the people, “Unless you live good lives, your children are going to look like the people in here.” It was a cruel, stupid, primitive thing to say.'some random guy said something once that isn't even a common thought -- this is clearly important!'>For me, the most important and beautiful photographs are the daguerreotype and older methods.Proof that it's just a gimmick IMO>They think that I’m taking advantage of situations.And they'd be correct. Granted its been a few years since I looked him up but my understanding is that as he got older the percentage of his photographs that just became 'naked young woman' grew in percentage. Like the 2nd photo of the guy that he's claiming its not 'morbid' when they literally have a fake cleaver stuck in the guys' head. WTF? This guys photographs are like the prophecy that lead to aesthetics like Linkin Park music videos. It's OK to just like spooky stuff and hot goth girls because they are attractive subjects to collaborate with.>it’s because even in death I find this power of reality that no sculptor or painter could recreate,Yep... that's called shock value. Not that deep.
>>4523665The difference is in Christianity it's not celebrated like it's just a good thing. That's demonic. Christians depict things out of reverence or fear in the case of hell. The reason why this stuff is Jewish is because it's Talmudic/ kabbalah esque. It serves to corrupt the concept of beauty. Your analysis is very shallow and boils down to "weeeeelll looks the same to me!". You are not considering why these things are made and what the end goal is
>>4523677>keeps a shriveled hand from a dead nun>waxes poetic about its purity>its diffunt!Stop playing with corpses, everyone!
>>4523746This is what happens when you can't think more than 1 layer deep
>>4523669>Israel = R1A (jews, turks, greeks, and other aryans)Lol, I'm R1a1a1 and 98 % Finnish, 0.7 % French German and 1.1 % Broadly Northwestern European.
>>4523746Try again. Put that world-famous IQ to work.
>>4523791>>4523761>actually, i am very intelligent because my excuse is slightly differentmessianic Jews crack me up>atheist jew: its beautiful because its about how the body is just a body man. cool photography right?>messianic jew: DEMONIC! i pray to corpses to uhh reflect on gods grace instead. YOU ARE DESTROYING BEAUTY!>actual jew: wtf is wrong with these people
>>4523804>>4523761
