Joel-Peter Witkin’s God-Loving, Gender-Bending Art

Joel-Peter Witkin, an octogenarian photographer, has sparked controversy with his sometimes macabre subject matter. However, his five-decade retrospective at Fahey/Klein Gallery showcases the practicing Catholic's commitment to the principle that "we are all God's children." From the 1970s to 2018, Witkin's tableau vivant photographs, featuring live models, props, and elaborate sets, blend mythology, the Bible, and art history to express compassion for the marginalized, including those with dwarfism, amputees, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, particularly those who are intersex.

Witkin exclusively uses traditional cameras and black-and-white film, approaching each photo shoot like a director making a movie. He constructs sets and develops his own prints, often scratching negatives and treating emerging prints with bleach or encaustic for textural effects and color highlights. For instance, in "Ecce Homo, NYC" (1975), a male hippie with sunglasses poses nude in high heels, his penis barely visible in dark shadows.

The title equates him with art historical representations of Christ, highlighting his left foot on a draped table and suggesting that wearing it is a subversive act.

Witkin's depiction of intersex models, such as in "The Three Graces, New Mexico" (1988) and "Gods of Earth and Heaven, LA" (1988), which mimics Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" (c. 1484–86), and "The Soul Has No Gender, Mexico" (2016), where a nude intersex person with flowing hair holds a skull, all blend dignity and edginess. Three nails propped against the wall in "The Soul Has No Gender, Mexico" parallel the persecution of Christ and the prejudicial abuses faced by people born with both male and female anatomy.

Among Witkin's most potent works is "The Kiss (Le Braiser)" (1982), which appears to depict two men kissing but is actually constructed from a corpse's head split in half. This imagery symbolically affirms the legitimacy of same-sex love while conjuring associations with narcissism and Witkin's status as an identical twin to another artist, Jerome Witkin.