Joel-Peter Witkin – Selected Works 1973 - 2018

Fahey/Klein Gallery, North La Brea Avenue 148, 90036, Los Angeles

July 23, 2026 – September 26, 2026

Fahey/Klein Gallery presents "Joel-Peter Witkin: Selected Works 1973 - 2018," showcasing photographs from Witkin's over four-decade career. The exhibition features seminal works and rare prints, highlighting Witkin's role as a significant voice in contemporary photography. His meticulously staged tableaux challenge conventions of beauty, morality, and representation, merging elements of religion, mythology, classical painting, and mortality. Witkin's photographs exist in a unique space between the sacred and the profane, presenting unsettling yet poetic imagery. Influenced by artists like Goya, Velázquez, and Picasso, he creates elaborate scenes with symbolic props and figures, manipulating negatives and prints through scratching, bleaching, and hand-drawing to produce richly textured works. His themes include faith, transformation, sexuality, and death, often focusing on marginalized individuals. Witkin, born in Brooklyn in 1939, has received numerous accolades and his works are held in prestigious collections worldwide. He currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico.