Le baiser (1982) by Joel-Peter Withkin
This black and white picture by Joel-Peter Witkin shows two male severed heads kissing. The background is black with a bit of texture that gives the illusion that the heads are resting on some sort of fabric. The two heads are very similar and we could even think that they are the same head from two different angles and the picture is edited in such way that they appear to be kissing. The heads belonged to white men, they appear to be relatively old, considering that they have wrinkles and their hairline has receded all the way to the back of the head.
This is an unmistakably disturbing image. The representation of death is far from being a taboo, it hasn’t been for a long time. Portraits of dead people were even customary in different periods. Now we see death in movies and television without much shock. However, there are certain ways of showing death that still shock us or disgust us. It remains disturbing to see the body, deprived of any will treated as an object to manipulate. This image is very violent as it implies that the photographer manipulated severed heads to get them into that particular position. From the beginning of mankind, man has taken care of the dead body in a certain way. We bury it, we cremate it, we establish ceremonies around it. The dead body is sacred and the thought that someone might use it, disfigure it, even play with it for aesthetic purposes is uncomfortable. The manipulation of the dead body is a taboo. It is necessary to perform certain rituals but the actual manipulation of the body is left to specific people, and these people are often viewed with a sort of trepidation. In japanese culture it used to taint a persons bloodline to work in such tasks. The burakumin were the families who, among other things (like slaughtering animals), disposed of corpses. Being burakumin was hereditary and they were not allowed to marry outside of their group. This is only an extreme example to show how the manipulation of the dead is perceived by humans.
Furthermore, the act of kissing is supposed to be consensual and the idea that someone forces that action to someone else is in itself disturbing. This adds to the sense of violence that is shown in the picture. It also adds to the idea that this picture represents a taboo because it could be viewed as a form of necrophilia. There are a couple of sexual behaviors that are considered taboo, even in pornography, and necrophilia is definitely among them.
In addition to this, I have to point out what the punctum (according to Barthes, the punctum is the element that grabs our attention when we look at a picture) of this image is for me. The punctum is the necks of the heads. They’re severed heads but they also appear to be rotting so the neck doesn’t have a clean cut, it’s almost as though it has been ripped off. The punctum is in fact much more precise, for me. It is what appears to be the aorta of the head on the right. I think that this element is particularly shocking because it implies that the body was. more than manipulated, butchered and deformed.
There are other things that makes me qualify this image in ‘the unwanted, the ugly and the taboo’ and that is the union it proposes between death, violence, sexuality, sexuality in old age and homosexuality. Witkin chose to represent here a combination of things we either don’t want to see, things that we reject completely and things that cause controversy.
However, if look at this picture making the effort of looking beyond our cultural bias, it could be interpreted in a very different fashion. ¿Could it be a representation of ever-lasting love? “Love alters not when it alteration finds” writes Shakespeare, maybe in this picture we see exactly that. Love does not alter even after death, even in old age, even in violence. It could even be a criticism of the idea of ever-lasting love.
