JOEL PETER WITKIN (Brooklyn, 1939)."Side Show, Budapest, 1993.Gelatin silver photography.Edition 1/12.Signed on the back.Size: 99 x 106 cm, 108 x 111 cm (frame).Peter Witkin is one of the most prominent and controversial photographers of our time, famous for his provocative works revolving around death, religion, myth and allegory.During the 1950s he obtained his first camera, using it without any prior training in photography. Already at that time, his first pictures showed quite unusual scenes, which began to reflect his concerns and experiences related to his past experiences. The repetition of scenes in which corpses, transsexuals, dwarfs, hermaphrodites or deformed people are present is related to an accident he witnessed as a child. His photographs, since then, are generally based on metaphors about life and death, some of them inspired by ancient works of art and religious passages, where he acknowledges Giotto as an influence, as well as artistic nods to the works of Goya or El Bosco, making use of the iconography of art history as a backdrop for his subjects. His main objective is to bring out that hidden side of society in general, that somewhat disturbing side that few dare to explore for themselves at some point in their lives, many do not even get to know it.Today, his works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The artist currently lives and works in Albuquerque, NM.