Drawing from four American collections of photographs, Joel-Peter Witkin has edited a new monograph which reveals "the ability of the photograph to show us our powerlessness in the face of madness, lust, disease and death." Included are nineteenth-century asylum inmate portraits with calligraphic annotations on each patients' diagnosis, turn-of-the-century crime scenes, nineteenth-century medical photographs, and a collection of images from the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research. Joel-Peter Witkin contributed the introduction.