I first encountered this image in Tom Beck's cultures of photography class, during an overview of Joel Peter Witkin's work. He is a strange man and artist across the board, traveling the country to photograph the grotesque. He explains it best in the afterword of Gods of Earth and Heaven: “I need physical marvels—a person, thing or act so extraordinary as to inspire wonder: someone with wings, horns, tails, fins, claws, reversed feet, head, hands. Anyone without a face. Pinheads, dwarfs, giants […] Active and retired sideshow performers, contortionists, anyone with a parasitic twin, people who live as comic book heroes […] Beings from other planets. Anyone bearing the wounds of Christ. Anyone claiming to be God. God.” Inspired by his parents' differing religious views, a fatal accident he claims to have witnessed as a child, and a three year stint as a war photographer in Vietnam, Witkin is drawn to the sorts of images that originate in nightmares. The most disturbing part of his photography is the lack of context: we don't know why the large naked woman reclines with breathing tubes in her mouth, or why the old man is poised to drill a nail into his own, and that makes it all the more creepy. "Dog on a Pillow" has the same disorienting effect... Whose face is that? Is it real? Is the dog itself dead or alive? Most importantly, why? It is precisely this ambiguity that causes the uncanny effect.
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