Josef Winkler was born in 1953 in the village of Kamering in the state of Carinthia in southern Austria and writes about his peasant religious upbringing. Winkler chose death and its rituals as his theme. The small world that surrounds him becomes a reflection of the ruthless big world, and images are given to him by the Catholic religion, depicted as an ally of death, since for millennia it has been trying to deprive people of many aspects of life. Winkler himself is inconceivable without Catholicism; his homosexual dreams and experiences are inseparable from the world of crucifixes and wafers, confessions and sweetly musty-smelling prayer books and pompous funeral rites.