Joel-peter witkin's photographs and collective unconscious

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Photography department, faculty of visual arts, art university, tehran, iran

2 photography department, faculty of visual arts, art university, tehran, iran

Abstract

Joel-peter witkin is an American contemporary staged photographer whose photographs of dead or deformed bodies, androgynous people and other controversial subjects in addition to strange stories about his life usually draw analyzers attention to his personal life and they have written psychoanalytic texts about his works based on Freudian method of psychoanalyzing. But in this paper the purpose is to overrule this kind of analyzes and based on Jungian method of psychoanalyzing this study is to experiment this hypothesis that: the reason of repeating some motifs in witkin's photographs has a root in collective unconscious mind not personal unconscious mind and childhood memories or complexes. Myths are the most important representations of collective unconsciousness so if the hypothesis is true there should be similarity and relation between witkin's repetitive motifs and a mythic creation, story or theme. In this paper at first repetitive motifs in his photographs has been realized and their connotative or metaphorical meaning has been studied and considering other artists works and the other external circumstacens the motifs which are coming from his unconscious mind not under the influence of circumstances have been identified. study showed that motifs which are unconsciously repeating in wiitkin's photos are: binary contrast of live-death , male-female, unraveling of unknowns(breaking the taboo) and sadomasochistic acts(enjoying pain). then the myths which are represented obviously in witkin's photos has been analyzed to find out what is the relation between them and repetitive motifs. study showed that witkin selected some myths to take photos which are completely aligned with repetitive motifs and in some cases he wasn’t careful to represent them in their correct mythical theme he changed anything to make his own interpretation of them. At last based on discovered information and by putting repetitive motifs together a mythic story has been found. Putting repetitive motifs together a network of mythic creatures has been represented: Hermes; a mythical androgynous creature who guide souls to the underground world(death world) and is also prophet and transfer messages between gods, and Hermes son; Pan, which is a mythical creature who enjoy sadistic sexual behavior and intimidating people, and Hades; the god of the underground world who is in relation with hermes and they meet each other. so In conclusion not only the hypothesis has confirmed but also by comparing some Freudian psychoanalytic interpretations of repetitive motifs in witkin's works and mythical interpretations of them a new point of view presented. For instance fragmented bodies in his photographs were interpreted by Freudian analyzer related to his childhood memory of an accident in which he witnessed the cut off head of a little girl. But this study showed that dead bodies in pieces are always represent with fruits and herbs so the motif changed to binary contrast of live and death which is similar to Hades; mythical creature which is the god of the death world but at the same time it is the god of harvest and its sign is a horn of fruits and herbs.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Fine Arts: Visual Arts
Volume 26, Issue 1
June 2021
Pages 123-130

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