If there is pain in my photographs, it relates to the pain in my own existence.

- Joel-Peter Witkin

I never photograph anything I don't believe in. If I love working with death, it's because even in death I find this power of reality that no sculpto…

- Joel-Peter Witkin

Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn't stop on the sixth day.

- Joel-Peter Witkin

I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of someday seeing it all.

- Joel-Peter Witkin

To me extreme things are like miracles. There is nothing as boring as a person who is just okay. But I could easily live in a world populated with th…

- Joel-Peter Witkin

My purpose is to acknowledge the wonder of being part of Creation. Though I myself don't create anything, I make from what has been created.

- Joel-Peter Witkin

I've come to realize that the mark is the primal gesture, the internal connection of the caveman to the cosmos; an impossibility similar to an impuls…

- Joel-Peter Witkin

People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who understand what I do appreciate the d…

- Joel-Peter Witkin

I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.

- Joel-Peter Witkin