Harm's Way: Lust & Madness & Murder & Mayhem

by Joel-Peter Witkin (Editor), Stanley B. Burns (Photographer)

, pages unnumbered, this edition limited to 5,000 copies, illustrated in black and white throughout, complete

Genres: Photography, Art, True Crime, Nonfiction

132 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1994

About the author

Joel-Peter Witkin is an American photographer who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work often deals with such themes as death, corpses (and sometimes dismembered portions thereof), and various outsiders such as dwarfs, transsexuals, hermaphrodites, and physically deformed people. Witkin's complex tableaux often recall religious episodes or famous classical paintings.

Reviews

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of my most prized posessions. It is out of print currently. I was lucky to acquire it when I did. It took a long time to find.

[Hank Stuever · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another essential Witkin. It's amazing to think how much his sensibility is still being copied and mimicked in popular culture.

[Syash Sticks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolute insanity. I can not do and review this book justice, which sucks because it lacks amazing reviews on this site. This book really makes you think about the carnage of a world without the ability to pursue justice, where murder was rampant and misery due to ignorance was great. The author selected set photos to show and showcase what madness was considered and how it was discussed at the time. The end is patient notes under pictures of men and women in insane asylums. The thing that caught my eye the most was that the writer did not translate the notes into normal text; he let the doctor's messy handwriting, most of which seemed rushed and without care, be the thing to define them. Before this, in the beginning, were photos of murders. After that, there was a series of pictures of illness that we have mostly gotten over in developed parts of the world, a whole medical world that is beyond our comprehension at this point. Modern medicine is a godsend.

What was done with the other and the unknown before we even knew it was something that was not discovered? This book will give you some of the answers to that if you allow yourself to be disturbed enough to see it. To quote someone else who read this book, Roberto Torres, in a paraphrase, "We must consider the violence we do unto ourselves as a society, and in which we choose to show ourselves. Hiding our kinks and our shames, locking them away and labeling them 'insane'."

The image that stayed with me the most is a 'death photo' to paraphrase of three children on a bed. Who were they? What were they doing? What happened to them? What were their names? Why are their names my fourth question to ask, and what does that say about me?