*Joel-Peter Witkin News*

Joel-Peter Witkin will be lecturing at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday, Feb. 22 at 2 p.m. His lecture will be the first in an annual series dubbed the Christopher Kalil Memorial Lecture. Kalil was a photographer who was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver in 1996. The address for the museum and lecture is: 1001 Bissonnet, Houston, TX 77005, in the Brown Auditorium. For more information, call,(713) 639-7300.


JOEL-PETER WITKIN

excerpt from


-god of earth and heaven-

Between the advent of pain
which is Birth, and the apotheosis
which is Death, there is convalescence
which is Life.

A BIRTH

Screams at birth mask the whir of life tapes being changed. I remember seeing without the use of eyes, only the last part. I was a man falling on all sides, breaking into pieces of myself--which were made of images.

A CONVALESCENCE

A title for this book could have been:"WHILE SOUTHWORTH AND HAWES WERE PHOTOGRAPHING LOLA MONTEZ, A PERSON IN THE NEXT BUILDING WAS BEING STRANGLED."

Because I am the dead air trapped between those buildings, I see and hear both events. The shutter being tripped, a cigarette staining the glove of Montez and blood in the eyes of the victim. This is so because I believe within us is an intangible malice that understands the possibility of these events and the isolation of their passions.

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