Joel Peter Witkin : Stedelijk Museum 1983

Witkin's staged scenes show physical perversity in an unprecedentedly morbid and misshapen form. The situations he pictures are grotesque and sometimes flatly repulsive. They fall in with vaguely defined imaginations of hell, underworld or torture chamber. The models he has photographed show the wear and tear of destructive passions. These are still intesified in Joel Peter Witkin's camera obscura.