It happened on a Sunday when my mother was escorting my twin brother and myself down the steps of the tenement where we lived. We were going to lunch. While walking down the hallway to the entrance of the building, we heard an incredible crash mixed with screaming and cries for help. An awful accident had taken place involving three cars, all with families in them. Somehow, in the confusion, I was no longer holding my mother’s hand. At the place where I stood at the curb, I could see something rolling from one of the overturned cars. It stopped at the curb where I stood. It was the head of a little girl. I bent down to touch the face, to speak to it — but before I could touch it — someone carried me away.

***

Because he was not a full-time student, Witkin was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War. In order to continue photography, he enlisted for three years and began training to be a combat photographer. Two years were spent working in twenty states and Europe assigned to different airborne and combat divisions. One of his assignments was to document forms of death: he photographed deaths resulting from accidents on maneuvers and suicides.

(Joel-Peter Witkin, FORTY PHOTOGRAPHS, 1985, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)