The World is Not Enough is a retrospective exhibition of Joel-Peter Witkin, the fascinating and controversial American photographer. Featuring images selected in collaboration with gallery owner Joshua Mann-Pailet, The World is Not Enough is a show many years in the making. “Witkin’s work is essential viewing,” says Pailet. “This is a rare opportunity to see, in person, such a full range and breadth of Joel’s work. Working personally with Joel to put this show together has been one of the great highlights of my career.”
In conjunction with PhotoNOLA 2016, Joel-Peter Witkin: The World is Not Enough features a selection of works spanning nearly four decades of the photographer’s career, from his star-making, shock-inducing photographs of the early-to-mid 1980s to his more genteel, contemplative works of today. From macabre still-lifes to grand figurative tableaux, Witkin’s work is informed by the likes of Giotto, E.J. Bellocq, Caravaggio, and Diane Arbus, while exhibiting a deep reverence for art history. Witkin’s visual world is fascinated with taboo, featuring dead and dismembered bodies, subjects both disabled and disfigured, hermaphrodites, dwarves, and other outcasts of traditional society. Imbued with a deep sense of wonder for the darkly mysterious aspects of human life and a true empathy for those that live in the shadows, Witkin’s photographs reflect his complex spirituality and seek “to bring light to the darkness.”
Joel-Peter Witkin made his first photograph when he was eleven-years-old. Edward Steichen selected one of Joel’s photographs for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art when Witkin was sixteen-years-old. At twenty-one, Witkin enlisted as a photographer in the U.S. Army, from 1961 to 1964. He holds a BFA in Sculpture from the Cooper Union and was awarded a fellowship in writing from Columbia University. After traveling extensively in India, Witkin moved to New Mexico in 1975 where he earned an MA and MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. He has held over 150 museum and gallery exhibitions while twenty-five monographs have been published on his work. Three documentary films have been made on his work, with another full-length documentary to premier in 2017. Witkin lives on his ranch in New Mexico with three dogs, five horses, one hundred chickens and one cat named My Cousin Vinny.
Joel-Peter Witkin, The World is Not Enough
Through March 10, 2017
A Gallery for Fine Photography
241 Chartres St
New Orleans, LA 70130
