“Joel-Peter Witkin is a photographer whose images of the human condition are undeniably powerful. For more than twenty years he has pursued his interest in spirituality and how it impacts the physical world in which we exist.

Finding beauty within the grotesque, Witkin pursues this complex issue through people most often cast aside by society — human spectacles including hermaphrodites, dwarfs, amputees, carcases, people with odd physical capabilities, fetishists and “any living myth… anyone bearing the wounds of Christ.” His fascination with other people’s physicality has inspired works that confront our sense of normalcy and decency, while constantly examining the teachings handed down through Christianity.

His constant reference to paintings from art history, including the works of Bosch, Goya, Velasquez, Miro, Botticelli and Picasso are testaments to his need to create a new history for himself. By using imagery and symbols from the past, Witkin celebrates our history while constantly redefining its present day context.

Visiting medical schools, morgues and insane asylums around the world, Witkin seeks out his collaborators, who, in the end, represent the numerous personas of the artist himself. The resulting photographs are haunting and beautiful, grotesque yet bold in their defiance a hideous beauty that is as compelling as it is taboo.

Witkin begins each image by sketching his ideas on paper, perfecting every detail by arranging the scene before he gets into the studio to stage his elaborate tableaus. Once photographed, Witkin spends hours in the darkroom, scratching and piercing his negatives, transforming them into images that look made rather than taken. Through printing, Witkin reinterprets his original idea in a final act of adoration.

Joel-Peter Witkin lets us look into his created world, which is both frightening and fascinating, as he seeks to dismantle our preconceived notions about sexuality and physical beauty. Through his imagery, we gain a greater understanding about human difference and tolerance.”

Quote taken from here.

• Proust – Remembrance of Things Past (Combray + Overture, pp.32): This novel supports my interest in the notion that memory can lead to a confusion of what is real and plays on the power our senses can have on our memory. For example, the smell of an orange being peeled can bring one back to a past Christmas morning, or sometimes we remember something but are unsure of whether it really happened, or whether we saw it in a film or dreamt it. This is called involuntary memory and is definitely worth exploring critically.
• In terms of critical practice, it is important to keep in mind why I am choosing to investigate this area of study, what it is I want to find out, and how I can offer a viewer a different, new way of thinking. Since this project has followed on from Level 2, my initial interest centred around how our memory can sometimes overlap with reality, and what this means to our perception of reality. For example, we can daydream, or remember something, and then be unsure of whether it really happened. This feeling can also occur during deja vu, and it is this that I would like to capture in photographic, visual form. It is unusual to be able to see another person’s perception of memory and reality and the sometimes blurry line that comes between the two, and this is what I want to capture.
• I need to sufficiently evoke memories (and connotations of them) for people in my images. A task that may deem useful is to get a collection of friends together and ask them to say which of my images produce past memories for them and why.
• There appears to be a strong relationship between my images and cinematic visuals, and I need to critically look into why this is. As stated before, we often are unsure of where we remember something from, and this can often be confused with seeing something in a film and believing it happened it real life. This is where the cinematic visuals (and a strong connection with Gregory Crewdson) comes into play, and I will utilise the critical theory in order to produce these cinematic visuals. In relation to this I will need to read up on psychological thrillers and horrors and how the director uses certain signifiers to produce tension and anxiety (other than music).
• Additional things I need to think about are bringing in objects or figures into my images of empty spaces. In the next few days I will perform a photoshoot of empty spaces in a plain, ‘normal’ house (as the previous shoot proved to be a little to grand looking, and thus wasn’t subtle enough, leaving little room for personal imagination from the viewer). In this photoshoot I will experiment with bringing subtle props or furnishings to perhaps trigger certain memories, or place figures within the frame to produce a sense of uneasiness. I also need to experiment with depth of field as this can often create strange, unordinary effects in an ordinary space. For example, it may be beneficial to place a pair of feet at the top of some stairs as this can connote tension. I need to analyse what makes and creates tension in terms of visual effects.
• I also need to send of a pack of approximately 10 photos to Photobox and get them printed. It can be useful to view prints in real life as opposed to on the computer or on plain printing paper as I will be able to get a clear impression of colours, composition, contrast and lighting.
• Close-ups are also an appropriate way of evoking memory. For example, things often looked bigger when we were younger, so by performing close-ups I can give the illusion that we are young again or I can trigger the memory of being young again.

The first screen capture displays effects achieved through using the editing process of vignetting.

The second displays effects achieved through producing a shallow depth of field in Photoshop (as opposed to on camera), and sepia tone.

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‘And so, faced with these periods of solitude, the topo-analyst starts to ask questions: Was the room a large one? Was the garret cluttered up? Was the nook warm? How was it lighted? How, too, in these fragments of space, did the human being achieve silence? How did he relish the very special silence of the various retreats of solitary daydreaming?’ pp.9

‘Memories are motionless, and the more securely they are fixed in space, the sounder they are.’ pp.9

‘For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our initimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.’ pp.9

‘And all the spaces of our past moments of solitude, the spaces in which we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired amd compromised solitude, remain indelible within us, and precisely because the human being wants them to remain so. He knows instinctively that this spaces identified with his solitude is creative; that even when it is forever expunged from the present, when, henceforth, it is alien to all the promises of the future, even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell. And when we reach the very end of the labyrinths of sleep, when we attain to the regions of deep slumber, we may perhaps experience a type of repose that is pre-human; pre-human, in this case, approaching the immemorial. But in the daydream itself, the recollection of moments of confined, simple, shut-in space are experiences of heartwarming spaces, of a space that does not seek to become extended, but would like above all still to be possessed. In the past, the attic may have seemed too small, it may have seemed cold in winter and hot in summer. Now, however, in memory recaptured through daydreams, it is hard to say through what syncretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and cool, always comforting.’ pp.10

‘Space calls for action, and before action, the imagination is at work.’ pp.12

‘But over and beyond our memories, the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us. It is a group of organic habits.’ pp.14

‘The house we were born in is more than the embodiment of home, it is also an embodiment of dreams. Each one of its nooks and corners was a resting-place for daydreaming.’ pp.15

‘And so, beyond all the positive values of protection, the house we were born in becomes imbued with dreams values which remain after the house is gone. Centers of boredom, centers of solitude, centers of daydream group together to constitute the oneiric house which is more lasting than the scattered memories of our birthplace.’ pp.17

‘A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability. We are constantly re-imagining its reality: to distinguish all these images would be to describe the soul of the house; it would mean developing a veritable psychology to the house.’ pp.17

‘As for the cellar, we shall no doubt find uses for it. It will be rationalized and its conveniences enumerated. But it is first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces. When we dream there, we are in harmony with the irrationality of the depths.’ pp.18

‘Lastly, we always go up the attic stairs, which are steeper and more primitive. For they bear the mark of ascension to a more tranquil solitude. When I return to dream in the attics of yester-year, I never go down again.’ pp.26

These two images reflect the notions I am attempting to achieve in future photoshoots, in that the staircase gives the spectator a sense of uneasiness and has a dizzying effect. The long corridor is effective in that it gives the spectator a sense of claustrophobia, like one’s head is being squashed. The Shining is relevant here, whereby the type of carpets, long corridors, wallpaper, and positioning of spaces makes the viewer feel uneasy. I will keep an eye out for features such as these over the next few weeks and see how feelings of uneasiness are conveyed through spaces.