Unpublished and Unseen by Joel-Peter Witkin
February 16 - April 8, 2001

In 1990 the government of France bestowed upon Joel-Peter Witkin the Chevalier Des Arts et des Lettres for contributions to the art of photography. Masters in art and literature have received this time-honored distinction over the centuries. The tribute to an American artist is exceptional -- especially since it was France that first announced and presented to the world the invention of photography in 1839.

Joel-Peter Witkin is a modern classicist. He often works from the tradition of conceiving ideas in stages until the final print is made. This process often includes drawing, sometimes collage, even marking on negatives and chemically treating prints to achieve certain effects and tones.

Historically, artists have used similar approaches to voice the uneasy truths about their own time. Pablo Picasso, Paul Strand, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, and Francisco Goya often derived their subjects from everyday realities. Within this exhibition, graphic work by these and other masters provide historic sources and indirect references to Witkin's process and imagery.

Like a documentarian, Witkin searches inside the espoused values and belief systems of contemporary culture. Art history and the camera are tools in his pursuit. He assembles in the studio subjects drawn directly from life, relating them to his spiritual explorations. Themes are expressed through visual forms of metaphor and parody that are charged with symbolism and irony.

Undercurrents of religious conviction and passion lie beneath the surface of Witkin's elaborately staged tableau images. Witkin's challenging and dark visions invoke grief and sufferance, remorse and conscience, desire and mortality. What he extracts from the contradictions discovered within life today speaks fervently to something deep within our collective psyche.

This exhibition comprises works spanning over forty years of Joel Peter-Witkin's involvement with photography. Included are rare and unique works, many of which have not been exhibited publicly before, among them some of his first pictures made in the 1950s and little-known etchings, drawings and collages which served as studies for photographs.

Unpublished and Unseen: Photographs by Joel-Peter Witkin has been organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is being circulated by the TREX: Traveling Exhibitions Program of the Museum of New Mexico, supported by grants from the Museum of New Mexico Foundation and various donors.

(This exhibition contains imagery which is difficult and may be upsetting to some; viewer discretion is advised.)