Joel-Peter Witkin (Photofile)

Handsome and collectible, the books each contain reproductions in duotone and/or color, plus a critical introduction and a bibliography.With his focus on the "disagreeable beauty" of the anomalous and the transgressive, Joel-Peter Witkin's images are edgy and disturbing. Influenced by artists from Giotto to the Surrealists, by daguerreotypes and the work of Bellocq, his portraits and complex tableaux incorporating corpses, hermaphrodites, masks, and mutilation provoke and challenge the viewer.