He was soon exhibiting in New York galleries. By the time Jerome was fourteen, he was invited to enter the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and from there he received scholarships, prizes, and invitations to study at some of the most prestigious international schools. Because JeromeвЂ™s artistic talent manifested itself very early, he was seemingly favored by their mother, something that did not go unnoticed by Joel or their sister. There is no doubt that the chaos at home accentuated by the divorce of their parents had an influence on their futures. Raised in Brooklyn primarily by their mother and eccentric grandmother, as children they were inseparable, dressing alike as most twins of the day did. ItвЂ™s complicated and something neither man is able to fully communicate.

Unlike most twins, they have had very limited personal contact for over fifty years. He captures both pain and hope in the eyes of his subjects, revealing portraits of incredible depth. A social realist painter who combines elements of Edward Hopper and Lucien Freud, Jerome paints the disenfranchised of recent historyвЂ™s violence, be it the Holocaust or the Syrian Civil War. Jerome Witkin, a painter, was an artist I didnвЂ™t know. Jerome Witkin in his studio in вЂњWitkin and Witkin.вЂќ Photo courtesy of Indiepix Films. Both photographers found beauty where others found ugliness but Joel went a step (actually many steps) farther in gravitating toward those way beyond the margins. He would stage his shots with the maimed, disfigured, and unattractive in such a way that his subjects revealed a pride in who they were rather than what they looked like. Joel, too, gravitated toward the bizarre and rejected but his photos revealed their indifference to their rejection, resonating with a beauty that the viewer had never before contemplated. Her camera found the humanity in the men, women, and children that they didnвЂ™t receive in their surroundings. ArbusвЂ™s subjects were from the edge of an unaccepting society that tended to underscore how and why they didnвЂ™t fit in. Joel focuses on those at the margins of society much like Diane Arbus did. Usually staged dramatically, some on crucifixes, others in the guise of Renaissance Madonnas, they are haunting and memorable. Some of his most famous, or infamous, photos are of beautiful naked transsexual women who have not completed the final surgical procedure, vaginoplasty. A particular target of Jesse Helms when giving reasons why the NEA should be defunded, Joel loves the unloved and the physically abnormal. It was the most graphically bizarre work I had ever seen, beyond, in many ways, that of Robert Mapplethorpe. I have known of Joel-Peter WitkinвЂ™s work for almost 30 years because a close friend collected his photography. Trisha Ziff, no stranger to the art world, should gain more fame with the release of her outstanding documentary on Joel and Jerome Witkin entitled eponymously вЂњWitkin and Witkin.вЂќ

Joel Peter witkin and one of his favorite models in вЂњWitkin and Witkin.вЂќ Photo courtesy of Indiepix Films.

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