Today, while talking to a friend about the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, I was reminded of Witkin's images. Cristina was talking to me about the cruelty and extreme beauty in Poe's tales, about the "horrible beauty" of his writing - and I was thinking precisely of the same characteristics in Witkin's photographs. I'm fascinated with the way he manages to join the grotesque of his themes - people with physical deficiencies or mutilations, corpses... - with inspiration from classical paintings and sculptures, building images of profound beauty. Disturbing images, yet very beautiful.
