Joel Peter Witkin : (showing prints, in random order, from one out of several boxes) This photograph is partially based on "The Judgement of Paris", by Rubens. The guy is a performance artist - with his cock. He developed a pneumatic pump that makes his cock this big, by suction. He also had surgery done on the head of his cock, so that he can put his finger inside. And he made another pump for his girl?friend, who is now a lesbian (laughs), to enlarge her clitoris. So she puts her clitoris in his cock. It's very interesting. But it was my idea to put the mark on his arm, like the tattoos in concentration camps. Because the image refers not only to the "Judgement of Paris", as in classical painting, but also to the judgement of Paris - the city - during nazi occupation. That's the historical aspect. And he is holding the eyes of Saint Lucy, because this man's existence is completely sensual, his cock is his real eye. This one is the severed head of an old man. It has been cut in half for medical research and was lent to me by a university.

Frank Horvat : But it was you who assembled it that way?

Joel Peter Witkin : Originally I wanted to do a photograph to be called "The History of Spain". When I got the box, I had no idea whether the head it contained was young or old, male or female. I had promised to return it within twentyfour hours, so I did the photograph at night and got up early to take it back. But as I was holding the two halves, I made them do this, as if kissing - and I knew that this was the image I wanted.

Frank Horvat : So you didn't plan it? I had been wondering to which extent your photographs were planned. In other words: if for you, as for more conventional photographers like myself, there is a decisive moment.

Joel Peter Witkin : Of course there is. Actually there are two decisive moments: the first when I record something with the camera, the second when I print. What I'm showing you here are not just mechanical records - but final objects, representing interactions between such records and myself. I draw on the negative, or scratch it, or take things out. At the moment of photography I act instantaneously and instinctively. At the moment of printing I take time for esthetic decisions for which I didn't have time with the camera, I re-design the image into something more powerful, more mysterious.

Frank Horvat : I was going to ask you about the scratching. I had been thinking about it, and have tried to understand your reasons. One possible reason that came to my mind - but I am not sure that I am using the right word - is an ethical one: if subject matter such as yours was presented in a straight, documentary way, it would be even less acceptable - ethically less acceptable.

Joel Peter Witkin : (laughs) I believe that the ethics depend on my attitude to the subject. When I photograph a person, I basically become that person, if only for a short period of time. And before I photograph them I have to get their agreement, make them understand what I'm doing, convince them of my sincerity - even if they consider my sincerity to be crazy. Most of the time I give them a print - a small one - and sometimes I pay them - or both. But whatever effort or money it costs, what's important is that I decide to photograph the person and that the person decides to be photographed. When we get to that point, it's as if the world were somewhere else, nothing exists but the time of the image and the emotions - personal or inter-personal - that will make the image happen. I surrender everything to the image.

Frank Horvat : And this makes it ethically acceptable. But has the problem of ethics ever worried you?

Joel Peter Witkin : Not really. I have been censured by others, whose attitude I may respect - but with whom I don't necessarily agree. Sometimes their attitudes surprise me. When I showed the work in Spain, people didn't mind the representations of death and sex, but were shocked by the religious associations, which to them seemed blasphemous. I told them that basically my beliefs were the same as theirs and that I didn't intend to blaspheme - only to visualise and clarify my beliefs to myself. 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. The Pieta or the Virgin of the Rocks are but inventions of the mind, however wonderful - while in the real human flesh, whether alive or dead, there is a power that is god-given. This is what keeps me in photography.

Frank Horvat : But do you agree with my point that the scratching makes this reality look less real - and therefore possibly more acceptable?

Joel Peter Witkin : Actually there are three stages in my photography. The first is when I prepare myself to make a connection, with a person or with an event or with something I've seen or read. The second is when the connection takes place, when the time, the light, the arrangements allow the photograph to happen. I believe there can be only one such moment - so I rarely shoot more than one roll. The third is when I print, which to me is seeing what through the camera I only perceived. I don't want to stop at that perception, I want to re-design and re-create what I perceived. It's like expanding time. Taking the photograph is like an automatic connection between the subject and my consciousness. Between that and the printing a week may pass - or more than a week, if I'm travelling. In the darkroom I first make normal contacts and select a frame. Then I draw or scratch on that contact. Then I put the negative on the viewing box and work on the negative - the one I have decided to use. In the past I've ruined some. because I don't do one scratch at a time and then check with a print, I do it all at once, sometimes it takes ten minutes, sometimes an hour. When the negative is ready for the enlarger, it looks as if it had been left all day on the highway, with cars rolling over it. Then I do the actual printing, which may take any time between a day and a week.

Frank Horvat : I must admit that I have always been biased against manipulations in printing and that I am even more biased against your kind of subject matter. In spite of that, your photographs move me. It's the mystery of this contradiction that I find fascinating - and that made me come half the way around the world to meet you. I would like to know more about this strange alchemy, by which you combine two things that I dislike, to produce something that I can't help liking and admiring.

Joel Peter Witkin : Your questions are almost like asking a painter "why do you paint this way?" All I can say is that I want to transform what has been collected by the camera into something more powerful, as if I was creating a camera to replace the original camera. If I was pushed against a wall, with a knife against my throat, and had to explain what I do, I would say that I try to offer, in the best form I know, prayers, to acknowledge the wonder of existence. My work is a kind of diary, through which I try to clarify my perception of existence, which is probably darker than most - though mixed with humour, or cynicism, whatever you prefer to call it. It's not that I consider my work as therapeutic, I don't claim that it provides any answers, neither for myself nor for others. Maybe it doesn't even clarify things - but I don't want it to confuse them either. 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.

Frank Horvat : I remember reading an interview in which you mentioned Saint Francis, who composed that hymn in praise of the whole of Creation, including wild animals, which to him were symbols of destruction - and "Sister Death" - death being feminine in Italian. To me your photographs convey the same message: that everything that exists - including the worst - is to be accepted and loved. This is probably what moves me.

Joel Peter Witkin : Spirituality is part of my background, and in this I consider myself very fortunate. My work is the reason for my being on Earth - not as an end it itself, but as the purpose of my soul. Sometimes I say to myself that the work is smarter than I am. I believe we all have gifts, one kid becomes a doctor, one a cook. When I look through the viewfinder and see the reversed image, everything changes - and this change has to do with my reason for being in life. That is my gift, it's through this gift that I have to redeem my existence, as Christ had to redeem all the other religions into something beyond them. The other component of my background is art. When I was a kid I used to collect reproductions of paintings and sculpture, as other kids collected baseball cards. As soon as I was old enough to take the subway, I went into Manhattan to see the museums. My real family have always been the artists, more than my mother and father.

Frank Horvat : So when you photograph those two half heads, kissing, (JPW laughs) with all that flesh falling to pieces, what is implied in the photograph is your participation in that kiss, as when Saint Francis kissed the leper. Because if you didn't participate, if you weren't ready to touch those lips with your own, a photograph such as this one would just be a perverse game.

Joel Peter Witkin : I agree. All depends on the intensity. I see millions of things in the course of a day - but only a few that I want to use my time for. Billions of photographs are taken every year, which are nothing but an ecological disaster, a waste of paper and chemistry. But this one, I think, is a good photograph. I love dealing with death, for me it's the same as life.

Frank Horvat : You say that you accept death. But you also said, in another instance, that you refuse pain.

Joel Peter Witkin : There is a great difference between death and pain. Of course a person may die in a very painful way, but death is not the extremity of pain, it's the end of life, the doorway to a higher plane of existence - and of work. After death we may continue working and growing.

Frank Horvat : But what about pain? There is a lot of physical pain in your photographs, inflicted or self-inflicted. Take the man hooking himself up by his testicles, it's one of the most painful images I can imagine - which is probably why you made it.

Joel Peter Witkin : The Testicle-stretch-man wasn't in great pain, he was in a very erotic, sensuous condition.

Frank Horvat : But when I look at the photograph, what it conveys to me is the idea of unbearable pain !

Joel Peter Witkin : Sure. But I don't photograph anyone who likes pain, only people who use it for their self-awareness. I have been approached by sadists who wanted me to photograph people they torture, but I refused, because I don't like their purpose. In the case of a masochist, like the Testicle-stretch-man, there may be this desire for awareness - but I can't imagine anything of that kind in a sadist. If there is pain in my photographs, it relates to the pain in my own existence.

Frank Horvat : Do you mean that your photographs express your own fear of pain?

Joel Peter Witkin : No. I have never been injured physically. I have only been in hospital twice, the first time when I was born and the second when I had pneumonia, in the army. Once I almost committed suicide, that was big pain, but more mental than physical. What I express in my photographs is not any fear of physical pain, but my connection with these people, with the way they deal with their own flesh and blood. I believe our anguishes are less related to fear for our bodies than to what we dread for our spirits and souls. I use physicality as a sort of metaphor.

Frank Horvat : Kosloff, in "The Privileged Eye", writes that your photographs are neither tragic nor comic - but lyrical.

Joel Peter Witkin : What does he mean by lyrical?

Frank Horvat : I wasn't quite sure until I read your remark about Saint Francis. Lyrical is something that has to do with love.

Joel Peter Witkin : I can think of something that supports your statement - and that could also explain the scratching. There is a connection between love and pain, as there is between love and hate. When someone truly loves, as Saint Francis loved the leper, he doesn't fear the pain involved, as Saint Francis didn't fear to catch leprosy and to dissolve in this man's stench and rot. If I may draw a parallel between my own rotten self (laughs) and a saint, I would say that I adress every instance with the same struggle as Saint Francis in that metaphor. As for the difference between straight prints and manipulated prints: had Saint Francis been content with any ordinary leper, possibly less horrible than what he imagined, that would have been like a straight print (laughs). But he wanted to see the worse, to go the whole way, to face not just any manifestation of fear, but fear itself. He had to find out what was contained in his greatest fear, which was also his greatest love. I am not saying that you have to be a masochist to find a way to God, but I say that unless you take the greatest risk and investigate the bottom of your greatest fear, you will never get to the cleansing endpoint.

Frank Horvat : So scratching the negatives enhances the photograph not only esthetically, but also ethically, because you take the risk of ruining them.

Joel Peter Witkin : It made me lose entire shootings. But that still doesn't explain why I make a certain scratch in a certain way. All I know is that I may work on a print for a whole day - or even for a week - trying every kind of change in order to resolve the image. And there is one change, one only, that makes me feel "that's it, that's how I want it". You see, what I try to do is remove myself from the finished print, as if I was another person seeing it for the first time. And then, if I really like it, I say to myself "I'm as good as my last image".

Frank Horvat : But the wrong scratch may destroy your photograph. Could one say that the risk you take is a kind of atonement for blasphemy? I don't use this word in any derogatory way - but I do believe that your work is blasphemous. Some mystics - I think I read it in Dostoewski - practiced blasphemy as way to salvation. Of course there was a price to be paid, in terms of either divine punishment or self-punishment.

Joel Peter Witkin : That's an interesting perception. But if I blaspheme, it's only because what I do is the most honest approach I know to creating an image of universal love. Possibly my spirit is not up to manifesting itself in a purer way. I know there are other works where simple people, or kids, can find a nourishment more to their taste.

Frank Horvat : You mean kitsch?

Joel Peter Witkin : Not only. Great works of art can have that quality too.

Frank Horvat : But if you tried to produce such works, they would turn out to be kitsch…

Joel Peter Witkin : I couldn't produce them. Because my work comes from the need to ascend to love, but through darkness. Technically I could do it easily, for instance by pushing objects around to make nice arrangements or by directing nice people in a nice way. It would be like going into automatic. But I don't want to leave it at that.

Frank Horvat : You have to explore the extremity of horror, the extremity of disgust, the extremity of pain.

Joel Peter Witkin : I have always felt that way, even as a child. That car accident in Brooklyn, when the girl's head came rolling my way, has changed my life.

Frank Horvat : What strikes me is that you never mention this episode as a traumatic experience - but as a sort of apparition.

Joel Peter Witkin : To me extreme things are like miracles. There is nothing as boring as a person who is just OK. But I could easily live in a world populated with these disjunctive, bizarre things - as long as their meaning wasn't damaging to the people involved. I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.

Frank Horvat : As you mention confusion, I must admit that I have been confused by some of your work. The Crucifix, for instance. When I first saw it, in a Manhattan gallery, I interpreted it as a deliberate blasphemy, intended to mock religion. Today I feel like apologizing to you for that mistake.

Joel Peter Witkin : The Crucifix cost me several months of work and more than 25.000 dollars of expenses. But that's not the point. My intention was that whoever saw it, from whatever background, should know and feel what the Crucifiction is supposed to represent. I have to admit that, from this point of view, the piece may not convince everyone. On the other hand, if I hadn't made it, I wouldn't have found out about certain connections - or disconnections - withing myself and my beliefs.

Frank Horvat : There may be another excuse for my misinterpretation - or for what you call a failure. As things stand, the only channel through which you can show and sell your work is the contemporary art market - where sincerity is more the exception than the rule. Work shown in this context may easily be misinterpreted.

Joel Peter Witkin : That's a good point. When The Crucifix was shown in New York, it was talked about in terms of post-modern expressionism - which is nonsense. Something altogether different happened in Spain: when the workmen of the Museum had unpacked it and began carrying it through the underground of the museum, towards the elevator, they spontaneously burst into a processional hymn. I was very moved by that. But let's procede. This one I call the Art-deco Lamp. One day my wife phoned from Florida, saying there was a hunchback woman who knew of my work and wanted to be photographed nude. So I paid her flight to Albuquerque. She stayed with us, in the guest-house, and soon became a friend. Some men are crazy about her, her body is different from anything, like an alien's. Looking at her back, one can actually see the beat of her heart and the air moving through her lungs. It was wonderful to watch.

Frank Horvat : So your photograph has helped her accepting herself as she is - or even loving herself.

Joel Peter Witkin : I think she loved herself before. The big print of this was in the Whitney Museum, opposite Diane Arbus. But I gave her a small print, which she sold, because she needed the money to live, and that helped her. To me she is beautiful. I didn't see her without cloths until she came to the studio - I would never have said to her "let me see you without cloths, honey", that's not me (laughs). In the studio she took them off and I said "I have to photograph you from the back" and she said "do you have to?" and I said "that's why you are here, photographing you from the front wouldn't be what you are about, nor what I'm about". So she agreed (laughs).

Frank Horvat : In this you are different from Diane Arbus. I knew her personally and admired her, but some feel she betrayed the people she photographed, taking from them what they didn't know they were giving.

Joel Peter Witkin : What I try to achieve is a collaboration between their phantasies and my own. Of course they don't know what I see through the camera, there is a distortion, especially with the old Rollei I use. But I always show them prints. And, as I said, I never deal in pain for pain's sake - but only as a way to clarification. Which cannot be said of Arbus, to the extent in which her photographs are but signifiers of her own phantasies or projections. I also photographed freak shows - in fact that's where I started. To me they seemed so much more interesting than the people who were watching them, more wonderful, more like physical manifestations of something unique. My gift is to deal with horror and pain, knowing that in horror and pain there is something sacred. This other man also deals in pain. What he performs was originally an indian ceremony, he does it in his garage, and prepares himself for it by fasting. When he is ready, someone cranks him up by his flesh. He first pierced his skin when he was twelve years old, nobody told him to do this, he just wanted to.

Frank Horvat : Does he is suffer great pain?

Joel Peter Witkin : No, he is in ecstasy. It's a form of meditation, there is no pain. Once your ear is pierced, there is no pain putting an earring in.

Frank Horvat : But to me, as a viewer, it's almost unbearable.

Joel Peter Witkin : Really? (laughs).

Frank Horvat : Which of course is why you took the photograph. Unbearability is one of the keys on which you are playing.

Joel Peter Witkin : I wouldn't say playing. My intention is to explore my own reactions - and also the reactions of others.

Frank Horvat : But is it unbearable for you?

Joel Peter Witkin : I'm fascinated by it. This person gives me the opportunity to witness the event, but also, in a religious sense, to share in it. Not that I live through it in body and mind, as he does - but in a sense I go through his pain.

Frank Horvat : Which is the way Christians look at the Crucifiction.

Joel Peter Witkin : Right. But as a symbol of something, by the knowledge of which a person can grow. Not as a confusion between the viewer and what is shown in the image.

Frank Horvat : For me, who am not a Christian, the image of Crucifiction means the unbearability of those nails through hands and feet - though I have read that this wasn't the most painful part of the ordeal and even that probably nails weren't used at all, the victim being tied with ropes and made to die by slow suffocation. But this is not the point: my references being what they are, my feeling of participation is triggered by those nails - as in the case of your photograph it is triggered by the hooks.

Joel Peter Witkin : Maybe, but what I am saying is that to make this image important and powerful, to make it bring about a state of awareness in the viewer, there has to be something beyond the documentary aspect.

Frank Horvat : And what's this something?

Joel Peter Witkin : The fact that I've made it esthetically interesting. My purpose is not to make the viewer fearful, but to open his mind to the mystery of what is shown. That's what is ethical - to use your word - in such a photograph. But in order to hold the viewer's attention, I have to do more than shock or horrify him - or he won't stay with the image.

Frank Horvat : In other words: the unbearability of recorded pain is redeemed by the esthetics of the image. It's again a matter of redemption.

Joel Peter Witkin : Maybe not redeemed by esthetics - but made acceptable by a form with which the spectator can agree. Pain is like a mask that, while we are in a healthy state, keeps us from perceiving the distruction that expects us.

Frank Horvat : Is this why you are fascinated by masks?

Joel Peter Witkin : I have wondered myself about this fascination. Masks remove what people normally engage us with, like their faces and their expressions.

Frank Horvat : Do you mean that expressions can mislead? And that to avoid being mislead you hide expressions behind masks?

Joel Peter Witkin : Right. Masking is also something we do to disguise or nullify our own spirit. A declared form or purpose can be a mask we put on. But I use masks for clarity. I want to reverse the purpose - just as I reverse references in art history.

Frank Horvat : You avoid the metaphorical mask by putting a physical one on their faces.

Joel Peter Witkin : Right. Sometimes I work with theatrical people, who have their own "shtick", and occasionally that works fine for what I want. But most of the time it doesn't, it compromises the very thing it's meant to express. As if you wanted to go somewhere by bus, but the bus has been diverted without your knowledge, and takes you where you dont want to go.

Frank Horvat : This makes me think of the Cornucopia Dog, which to me is one of your strongest and most anguishing photographs - possibly because of the ambiguity between expression and mask. The expression seems to say that the dog is alive, while the gap in the stomach indicates that this is impossible and that the expression is but a mask.

Joel Peter Witkin : (laughs) I wanted to photograph an autopsied dog, so I asked a doctor friend to supply me with one, about as big as a german shepherd and not too dark, so as to come out well in a black-and-white photograph. A week later he phoned to say I could pick it up. The thing looked terrible, with it's eyes closed and that gap in the place of the stomach. But I had worked with medical photographers in New York and had learnt a few things - while others I just invented. Sometimes I plan how to approach things, making little drawings and sketches for myself, before I actually photograph - even though I know that what really matters happens by chance. It's as with a language, you may know a language but that's not enough to make a poem.

Frank Horvat : What makes a poem is the unexpected.

Joel Peter Witkin : It's unexpected but it's ahead of you. And you have to be open enough to take risks. And it's the risks that bring knowledge.

Frank Horvat : Which is what photography is all about.

Joel Peter Witkin : And what life should be all about. That's what happened in this case: I photographed the dog, it was a good photograph, but it wasn't the Cornucopia Dog. And just as with the Kiss, I could only keep the specimen for twentyfour hours, and two hours before I had to return it I had this idea of the gap as a Cornucopia. I reached down in my pocket and found that I had about two dollars. But such is my respect for all the things that I photograph, dead or alive, that I didn't just go to a regular supermarket, but to an organic food store (laughs). I bought two dollars worth of vegetables and put them into the gap. I also opened and pinned the eyes, put a little mineral oil on the nose, suspended the head to make it look up - and it looked great. If a person had come into the room at that moment, he would have seen what you see in the photograph. Something alive and destroyed at the same time, imbued with many different references: Death and Life, Rottenness and Health, Death and Food, Food and Disease.

Frank Horvat : My first idea is pain. Because the dog looks alive.

Joel Peter Witkin : That's interesting too. You see - the other thing I could have been in life, if I was more objective, is a doctor. Had my mother been Jewish, I would be a doctor (laughs). I can work with people who are crippled, diseased, distorted or whatever, because I look at them with an idea of healing - not physically, but through esthetic association. If I hadn't photographed this dog, it would have been burned. The severed head would have been kept in it's bottle. It was up to me to revive them, by giving them a purpose that otherwise they wouldn't have had. I used another dead dog for this bestiary which I built in a little town near Madrid and which I call Bruja - witch. The fish came from the market, the raven's wing from here, New Mexico, the tail and the horns from a cow. I also brought a female face and a pair of breasts.

Frank Horvat : Real ones?

Joel Peter Witkin : (laughs) Made of wax, beautiful! I got myself locked into a room that belonged to a slaughter-house, and I told them I wasn't going to leave until I had finished. I knew it would take about eight hours, but I was worried because the dog was beginning to smell. I hadn't taken any food, if I'am busy digesting I can't think properly. But they gave me two bottles: one of wine, to drink, and one empty, to piss in. I had a beautiful japanese saw, bought in New York, and knives for cutting out the intestines. When I opened the dog, the smell became so strong that I had to wear a mask. It was a mess, it made me think of concentration camps and torture. But I had chosen to go through the experience of dismemberment and death, tearing this dead flesh apart, so that I could infuse new life into it. As I was sawing off the dog's face, I hit the optical nerve and the eyes reacted and looked at me (laughs). It took about fifteen minutes to saw it off, a body can be strong. So I put the human face on the dog. Then I drilled through the brain and put a rod into the neck, to keep the head up. I wasn't thinking, I was in a kind of meditational mood. At the end I placed wings on both sides of the face and arranged the expression: the dog, human now, seemed to look away. I took a few frames and that was it. Then I knocked at the door. It was three in the morning, the guy in the other room was sleeping, and I only said "I've finished". He helped me collect the parts, put them into plastic bags and clear the room. Back in Madrid, I was too excited to sleep, so I went to the Prado and was standing in front of the Saint Sebastian when my nose started bleeding, it happens when I'm totally exhausted (laughs). The attendant said "you are bleeding" and I tried to help her cleaning up. But she said "get out of here". So I went back to the hotel and slept for twelve hours.

Frank Horvat : I must admit that it's not among the photographs that I prefer.

Joel Peter Witkin : You don't like it? That's fine. Then let's go on. This girl was four year old when I photographed her. I call it Nude with Mask - not Little Girl with Mask, because this person is going to be the next Marilyn Monroe. She's a hot kid.

Frank Horvat : Here, for once, you did a straight print.

Joel Peter Witkin : It only looks straight, in reality it's highly manipulated. I used paper of a different emulsion, to get a silvery, very french look, almost like a platinum print. To me it's a very poetic photograph, the little oval is like a tiny key-hole, meant for the eye of a cock, so when you look at the image you are like the head of a cock (laughs). This one is interesting too. It's based on an obscure painting in the Metropolitan Museum, "Marcantonio Pasqualini Crowned by Apollo", by Andrea Sacchi. This man puts nails through his hand, and also through his cock. With a hammer.

Frank Horvat : For business or for pleasure?

Joel Peter Witkin : Both, he belongs to an S and M group. He uses a rod of stainless steel, sharp as a pencil, that can go through the skin without making it bleed - as long as it doesn't break any blood vessels. That's why he can do this. So while he was getting himself ready, (laughs) I went to the women's room - which was their dressing room - to check the woman. She is Austrian, and a dominant, and she had this mask, which I liked, and the boots, which I liked too. Though I had doubts about the halter, and suggested that, for the first shot, she might take it off. But she said "iff I take de halter off, I fouldn't pe a tominant, I fould pe a supmissif" so I submitted and said "keep it" (laughs). The third one is a guy who wanted so badly to be a woman - he got these little breasts by taking hormones - that two months ago he cut his testicles off, with a razor blade, and then waited for the ambulance to come - because he couldn't afford regular surgery. I had met these people the night before, at the S and M club, and had convinced them to be photographed. When all was ready, this one said "Mr. Witkin, I don't want to show my thing, is there any way we can make it be there without showing it?" I just shouted "get the fuck on the set" (laughs) - so he acted submissive and kind of liked it. But the guy who was to put the blade into his cock started complaining "I can't reach this" so I screamed "you just have to". I was kind of nervous, I'd been working all night to set everything up.

Frank Horvat : You had no assistants?

Joel Peter Witkin : I was alone with these five people. So I grabbed the hammer and banged it and shouted "I'll do it for you" (laughs). Little did I know, when I got up that morning, that I might actually have to crucify a guy's cock. It's a nice photograph, I can't wait to see it big. Though I admit that even I would have a hard time looking at it over breakfast - it exists a little better at night-time (laughs). This man lost his hands in the Korean War. He was wonderful too, because when you dont have hands, you really can't be clean. This guy wasn't clean. I had to take his cloths off, it was a terrific experience, and after we had finished I had to put his pants on again. He smelled badly. To sign the model release he held the pen in his mouth - but I must get releases. And here is Las Meninas, which was commissioned by the Spanish Governement. It took me five weeks to put it together, because there had to be all these elements to define the image. The little girl has no legs, her stubs are the thing one notices last - but that's what makes the image so timeless and painful and beautiful. The third week her parents phoned, I thought they had agreed to fly her over, but they said "it's up to her, we can't take that decision". Luckily, on the fourth week, she did agree. If she hadn't, I would have had to find another model. And there I am, as Velasquez (laughs). My wife took the photograph, I relied on her to get the expression, and she did. There was only one roll of film, though it took five weeks and about thousand dollars to put the image together.

Frank Horvat : This one looks like a broken doll.

Joel Peter Witkin : It's a real human being. He has no arms, no legs and no skin. The bandages are to keep him moist. And his cock looks like it was burnt off.

Frank Horvat : And no chin?

Joel Peter Witkin : No, and no real ears either. And no eyelids, his eyes are always open.

Frank Horvat : How do you relate to him?

Joel Peter Witkin : He is very intelligent. He is a thalidomide victim, thirtyfive years old. While signing the release, with his prothesis, he said to me "whatever you do, Joel, make me look like a real human being". He is on pain killers all the time. The two men who live with him, in LA, are drug addicts. They wrap him up every day and share his drugs.

Frank Horvat : Going through your work is like a journey through hell. Do you ever think of it that way?

Joel Peter Witkin : Helmut Newton makes these very interesting photographs of beautiful people - I photograph strange people. But I try to imbue compassion into my images. In this particular photograph everything is an actual event, I used only available light and didn't make any change in the room, except for the piece of velvet I put on the couch. An assistant held the chopping knife, to make it look as if it was going through the head, and I added the arrow, which I found in a Hollywood toy store. The mexican artifact is from Albuquerque, it represents the head of the centurion who speared Christ on the side. The dead branch I found in my hotel room, I lightened it with chemistry to make it look like a corona.

Frank Horvat : You say everything is an actual event. But you had to use all those props to make the subject look less real: because a realistic photograph of this being - I find it difficult to say "this person" - would have been be even less bearable.

Joel Peter Witkin : It would have been a clinical photograph.

Frank Horvat : But how did this encounter affect you? Could you deep the night after?

Joel Peter Witkin : I was fascinated. When I first saw him, he was on pain killers, all I saw through the door was his little head on the couch. One of the guys said "Mark is asleep, come back later". I had to come back four times to convince him to be photographed, which I understood when he told me that all his life he had been exploited in freak shows. I showed him drawings, prints, explained about my history and my work. I said I could either give him a print or pay him 200 $. He said "I'll take the money".

Frank Horvat : My first reaction to the photograph is to see him as an inanimate object - the opposite of my reaction to the Cornucopia Dog, which I tend to see as alive. This must mean something about the functioning of your work: through confusion - as you said - to possible clarity.

Joel Peter Witkin : I call it Un Santo Oscuro. In countries like Spain, clerics used to have themselves painted as martyrs. When I first saw this man, he was in a motorized wheel chair, with a little baseball hat on his head, a cup in one prothesis for begging and another cup in the other prothesis for his cigarette ashes. At home he goes on pain killers and sleeps. For me he is like the leper coming down the road - or like a saint. I didn't want to photograph him in a clinical way, but so as to suggest that he has been purified through his pain.

Frank Horvat : The word that comes to my mind is Transfiguration.

Joel Peter Witkin : But in the process I'm changed as well. I didn't have nightmares: but the excitement for having made this image kept me sleepless for nights. I cannot think of him as a friend, but he has been part in making an image which is powerful and beautiful and crazy and ugly and horrific at once. There is more spirituality in it than in the Crucifix : because this is flesh and blood, real, not invented. All I had to invent was the best way to emphasize the reality.

Frank Horvat : He doesn't have to wear a mask, because his face, in it's horror and beauty, is a mask. But do other people recognize him as human?

Joel Peter Witkin : Their first reaction is to protect themselves - so they see him as a mannikin. But when you look at the print for five minutes, you know it has to be a human being, you see the eyes, the pathos, the detail, the scarring. When I first put this negative into the enlarger, and saw it even in the negative form, I knew it was a tremendous image. From there on, it was just a question of making it better my way, by adding little things and scratches. The negative is incredibly scratched, in the end I was worried whether I hadn't scratched the face out, or obliterated the eyes.

Frank Horvat : You had only one negative?

Joel Peter Witkin : The last frame of the roll. Usually it's either the first or the last frame. That's how it's meant to be (laughs).