mean I’m obsessive. It means the deepest desire of my life is to express myself this way.
AB: How long does it take you to develop, produce, and print a photograph?
JPW: Sometimes it takes me about six months. I always make sketches, and I refine my intention. Then
there’s the time it takes to get everything set up, to build the set, and paint the set. I work with one person
part-time, who I’ve worked with for over 25 years, and we talk things over, put things together, I suggest
what I want, and I rely on her to do what she has to do. I’m usually surprised with what she comes up with.
Every object and person in every photograph is a world to me. I process my own film and I print my own
work, which I must because the final print is the final and most clear definition of what I wanted to create.
AB: You also manipulate the photographic surface to make it appear aged. Can you speak about this?
JPW: If I really wanted to make old looking photographs, I would make photographs using older processes. There was a magazine called The Daguerreotype Magazine, and there were two images I saw
recently. One was a straight black-and-white photograph, and then the same shot taken with a daguerreotype. And the daguerreotype was magnificent. What that meant for me was that one of the first forms of
photography, daguerreotype, made the most bland objects look wonderful. That continued on to tintype.
When paper come about, platinum and palladium prints, they had their own kind of looks. Unfortunately,
in contemporary processes, because I’ve been printing for over 50 years, I’ve seen paper go from being
heavy and silver, to being, for economic reasons, thinner and less able to have the rich look I’ve always
wanted. For me, the most important and beautiful photographs are the daguerreotype and older methods.
Joel Peter-W itkin, Above: Un Santo Oscuro, LA, 1987.; Following spread: The Raft of George W. Bush, NM, 2006.
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