Joel Peter Witkin

Check out the photography of Joel Peter Witkin. He uses cadavers to create darkly imaginative images which, once you look past the macabre spectacle, are just magical.

Witkin claims that his vision and sensibility were initiated by an episode he witnessed when he was just a small child, a car accident that occurred in front of his house in which a little girl was decapitated.

"I could see something rolling from one of the overturned cars. It stopped at the curb where I stood. It was the head of a little girl. I bent down to touch the face, to speak to it -- but before I could touch it someone carried me away."

Essay on JP Witkin