Joel-Peter Witkin Quotes

• People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who understand what I do appreciate the determination, love, and courage it takes to find wonder and beauty in people who are considered by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or wretched.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Determination, Hate, Thinking

  Germano Celant, Joel-Peter Witkin (1995). “Witkin”, Distributed Art Pub Incorporated

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• Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn't stop on the sixth day.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Artist, People, Realizing

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• I wanted my photographs to be as powerful as the last thing a person sees or remembers before death.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Powerful, Before Death, Lasts

  Germano Celant, Joel-Peter Witkin (1995). “Witkin”, Distributed Art Pub Incorporated

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• If there is pain in my photographs, it relates to the pain in my own existence.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Pain, Photograph, Existence

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• I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of someday seeing it all.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Matter, Spirit, Someday

  Joel-Peter Witkin (1998). “The bone house”, Twin Palms Pub

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• To me extreme things are like miracles. There is nothing as boring as a person who is just okay. But I could easily live in a world populated with these disjunctive, bizarre things... I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Confusion, Miracle, World

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• I've come to realize that the mark is the primal gesture, the internal connection of the caveman to the cosmos; an impossibility similar to an impulse in an insect's nervous system that it could somehow reduce to dust a steel beam by endlessly crawling over it.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Dust, Connections, Cosmos

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• 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.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Believe, Reality, Photograph

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• Extreme things are like miracles. Nothing is as boring as a person who is just okay.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Miracle, Boring, Okay

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• My work would have the impact of my unreality - my doubts.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Impact, Doubt, Unreality

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• 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. And there, in the eternal destiny, to seek the face I had before the world was made.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Distance, Destiny, One Day

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• My purpose is to acknowledge the wonder of being part of Creation. Though I myself don't create anything, I make from what has been created.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Purpose, Wonder, Creation

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• I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  Confusion, Chaos, Clarity

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• I could easily live in a world populated with disjunctive, bizarre things.

  Joel-Peter Witkin

  World, Bizarre

  4 Copy quote

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