Synopsis
As children, Jerome and Joel-Peter Witkin were rarely seen as individuals. “To society, we were The Twins. Yet we are two distinct entities.” Today, they have become strangers to one another. Their paths diverged during adolescence, when Jerome turned to painting and Joel-Peter chose photography. One became a photographer whose images seem to emerge from a surrealist painting. The other became a painter whose canvases reflect the world through the lens of realism.
Two artistic practices that, despite the distance between them, remain in striking dialogue. In Witkin & Witkin, Trisha Ziff explores the parallels between these two trajectories while tracing the gradual unraveling of a family bond. Through interviews with the brothers and the women who have shared their lives, a sensitive portrait emerges of a relationship shaped by love, rivalry, and distance. Ziff brings the brothers together not only on screen, but also through an exhibition, the first to present their work side by side. An opportunity, perhaps, to finally look at one another.
What you will find in this film
Twinhood and the construction of two distinct identities • Parallel artistic trajectories • The surrealism of a photographer and the realism of a painter • Art as a means of confronting violence in the world • The narrative power of images • Strangeness as a creative force
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Further exploration
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Jack Rutberg ed. – Jerome Witkin & Joel-Peter Witkin: Twin Visions, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, 2015. (English) – The most directly connected book to the film’s subject: the first joint exhibition of the two brothers’ works.
Sherry Chayat – Life Lessons: The Art of Jerome Witkin, Syracuse University Press, 2006. (English) – A key monograph on Jerome Witkin’s realism, moral vision and historical subjects.
Edward A. Aiken, Donald Kuspit, Peter Selz, Sherry Chayat – Drawn to Paint: The Art of Jerome Witkin, Syracuse University Art Galleries, 2011. (English) – A strong exhibition catalogue on Jerome Witkin’s painterly practice and figurative intensity.
Joel-Peter Witkin – Gods of Earth and Heaven, Twelvetrees Press, 1989. (English) – A major early monograph on Witkin’s staged, ritualised and often troubling photographic world.
Germano Celant – Joel-Peter Witkin: A Retrospective, Scalo / D.A.P., 1995. (English) – A broad retrospective volume, useful for situating Witkin’s work within late twentieth-century photography.
The AFI DOCS Interview: WITKIN + WITKIN Director Trisha Ziff – American Film Institute
Oral history interview with Joel-Peter Witkin – Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Joel-Peter Witkin interviewed by Brainard Carey – Bruce Silverstein Gallery
Jerome Witkin: Painting History, Memory and Fantasy – John Seed
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