12 Quotes by 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.

I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.

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 sculptor or painter could recreate, not even a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci.

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

I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of one day seeing it all. Seeing in its total form, while wearing the mask, from the distance of death. And there, in the eternal destiny, to seek the face I had before the world was made.

I wanted my photographs to be as powerful as the last thing a person sees or remembers before death.

Extreme things are like miracles. Nothing is as boring as a person who is just okay.

My work would have the impact of my unreality – my doubts...

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