THE HISTORY OF POSTMORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE BURNS COLLECTION AND ARCHIVE
ILLUSTRATED LECTURE AND BOOK SIGNING WITH STANLEY B. BURNS, MD
Observatory: 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215
Monday, December 5th, 8:00pm, Admission: $5
Monday, December 5th, 8:00pm, Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
Postmortem photography, photographing a deceased person, was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These photographs, from the beginning of the practice until now, are special mementos that hold deep meaning for mourners through visually “embalming” the dead. Although postmortem photographs make up the largest group of nineteenth-century American genre photographs, until recent years they were largely unseen and unknown. Dr. Burns recognized the importance of this phenomenon in his early collecting when he bought his first postmortem photographs in 1976. Since that time he has amassed the most comprehensive collection of postmortem photography in the world and has curated several exhibits and published three books on the subject: the Sleeping Beauty series. Tonight, Dr. Burns will speak about the practice of postmortem photography from the 19th century until today and share hundreds of images from his collection.
These titles will be available for sale & signing at Observatory the night of the lecture:
Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children
Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement & The Family in Memorial Photography…
Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou
News Art: Manipulated Photographs from the Burns Archive
Deadly Intent, Crime & Punishment: Photographs from the Burns Archive
Seeing Insanity: Photography & The Depiction of Mental Illness
Below are a few more of the hundreds of images that will be discussed:
About Sleeping Beauty: Dr. Burns’ first book on postmortem photography, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (1990) has been widely recognized as one of the most important photography books of all time. Sleeping Beauty has influenced an eclectic array of fields, from bereavement counseling and education to cultural anthropology, history, medicine, philosophy, religion and spirituality (not to mention pop music) and has been cited in debates on the death penalty, euthanasia and abortion. It has been the subject of numerous scholarly papers as well as seminars and exhibitions at notable institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The New Museum of Contemporary Art. A decade later the Archive published Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement & The Family in Memorial Photography American & European Traditions in conjunction with an exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay. Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children, the third installment in this series was released this year to accompany a traveling exhibition.
