On Pentecost 2006 I spoke to a man in the gathering space at the Newman Center. He was someone that I had seen at Mass for several years, but didn’t really know who he was…I just thought I’d be friendly so I approached him and said hello and asked how he was doing. He had been asked to take part in the processional with about 11 others to take lighted candles into the chapel and place them in a large cauldron near the altar (to represent the tongues of fire of the Holy Spirit.) Talking to him I learned that he is a world renowned photographic artist and his name is Joel Peter Witkin. He is shown in galleries and museums all over the world, but I was unfamiliar with his work. The next week Gerald and I spoke to him for a while after Mass and learned even more about him. He’s been quite an enigma to me. When you look at the work he produces I find it hard to believe that we know him from church.
Last week Joel handed Gerald an envelope after Mass. It contained a flyer about a presentation that he would make to the American Society of Media Photographers. We decided that we’d go and RSVP’d. The talk was last night and we took a friend from out of town along with us. Even though I had seen Joel’s work online, it certainly was more meaningful to hear how he came up with the ideas for the montages he creates for his photography. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the content of his work…very creative and yet often times, very disturbing. He is fascinated with using cadavers, body parts, and what most of us would consider ‘freaks of nature.’ Listening to him describe the why and how of many of his creations was very interesting and thought provoking. He wants to make us really examine how we think about those that are not like most of us. His creativity is so vivid, what a wonderful thing to keep coming up with all these incredible images full of statements about our society (whether I agree with them or not.) He stopped to say hello and when I squeaked out that I had lost me voice, he asked right away if I left it somewhere? He is very genuine and generous with us and we are pleased to know him and call him our friend.
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I studied Witkin’s images in several photography classes completed over the past few sememsters at UNM. I was working on a B/W series of portraits of Breast Cancer survivor’s “scars and all” – titled “Dove in the Window -Portraits of Dignity Strength Hope” – the collection along with other mixed media works hung in the ASA gallery for several months in the Spring of 2007. Witkins work is fascinating and was helpful since my own focused on bodies altered by surgery,chemo and radiation and also were in B/W. I am pleased, surprised and yet not, to learn of his participation at the Newman Center – I am also an ordained UM clergywoman and grieve the heavily Puritan influence on our understanding and acceptance of the human body in all its manifestations. Molly
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