Joel-Peter Witkin in Colombia Black Star Rising
As a coat of poached eggs and freshly squeezed papaya arrives at our table, Witkin barely has a time to sample his plate. The incessant ringing of a borrowed cellphone breaks the morning pleasantries, as this fabulous photographer, trying to remain calm, reaches for a better signal, leaning over the metal railings which away the interior of the restaurant from the sidewalk.
Emphatically explaining to his bank manager that it has been impossible for him to withdraw funds with his assign card (as there seems to have been a mix-up with his PIN number) and the fact that he is in a part of the world called “Colombia,” Joel has a technological against on his hands, and for almost an hour I am in the presence of greatness and financial madness. “This is a form of combat,” remarks the photographer after he conclusively gets his message through to Albuquerque. “Life combat.”
A Walking Contradiction
Born in Brooklyn in 1939, to a Jewish initiator and an Italian Catholic mother, Joel-Peter Witkin is a walking contradiction. At home in the finest galleries of Europe or on his in the lurch ranch in New Mexico, he looms among the greats of modern photography. As a staunch “traditionalist” in his modus operandi, he has embraced Catholicism and a Jewish toil ethic. While critics have employed many adjectives to describe his visual undertakings from “dark” to “melancholy,” he is anything but; a man whose smile spans the Williamsburg bridge, can light up a conversation in seconds and whose eyes spark like fully-charged strobes, whenever a joke is made.
AP A yourself in costume attends the Gay Pride Parade in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday June 26, 2011. – AP A person in outfit attends the annual Gay Pride Parade in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Sunday June 26, 2011. – AP Yani Tseng, of Taiwan, watches her abuse shot and more »
