Stanley BurnsRecensioni

Very interesting. Stanley Burns, besides showing pictures of geishas as expected, goes into details about geishas and Japanese culture. He also goes into great detail about photography in Japan in this era and how popular these pictures were for tourists. These photos are painted - the kimonos are striking and they are beautiful pictures.

I kept thinking of Memoirs of a Geisha, though, as I looked as these pictures. And how painful it would be to sleep on that elevated wooden post to preserve your hairstyle. (Today's geishas can wear wigs.)

Very sad, very moving book on postmortem photography. This particular book is about children, and the era it spans is from the advent of photography until the present.

I found this interesting in the introduction as I really liked the film The Others:

"Sleeping Beauty has also served as inspiration to documentary filmmakers and several Hollywood feature film directors who used photographs from the book in their films. . . .Producer Tom Cruise and director Alejandro Amenabar's film The Others, starring Nicole Kidman, featured several full screen postmortem photographs from Sleeping Beauty, with the images playing a central role in the story." (May have to watch that film again.)

Interesting but rather sad book. Besides the postmortem pictures of children and a few adults, there is a chronological history of death in America, discussing such things as life insurance, funeral homes, tombstones, and childhood diseases and epidemics. This is the 2nd book in the series that I have read.

Death photography, while being somber and at times beautiful, is sometimes very creepy and a great topic for Halloween 2017 on Odd Things Considered. Such photography can upset people so I am going to keep any scans of the photos over on my site. Here's a snippet of the discussion:

I find the best way to discuss these books is to quote from the textual information and demonstrate the information with photographs. Because some people, understandably, find pictures of dead children distressing, I will put all such photos under the cut.

Sleeping Beauty II was created…

…to complement the exhibition “Le Denier Portrait” at the Musee d’Orsay, Paris, in which several photographs from the Sleeping Beauty series have been included. This book presents for the first time the important distinctions between American and European postmortem imagery.

In photography’s earliest years, death was still widely considered a natural part of everyday life. People took photographs of their cherished departed with a reverence little understood today. These photographs were a normal part of the culture, and we are testament to a time when the magic of photography offered the hope of extending relationships. At the moment people who were most vulnerable, photography offered a memento that seemed real – a tangible visual object that allowed continued closeness to the deceased.

We can feel the power of these photographs generations after the images were made. We relate to these pictures of strangers because they speak of a universal language of emotions – tenderness, affection, need, hope, loss and despair – uniting the human family in common experience.

People are often upset by these images and in a way it reminds me of the way people are appalled when some callow youths poses for a selfie with sick or dead relatives. There is something unseemly about forcing the extremely weak or dead into photographs. You can’t be any more vulnerable than dead – you no longer have any control over what is done to you, and it seems foul when some Instagram-generation kid grins next to the open casket, iPhone in hand. But it makes me wonder how such photos will be received a couple hundred years from now. Once we place these photos in the historical context in which they were created, they often seem less callous and exploitative.

You can read my entire discussion here.

You have to have a really morbid curiosity to view these images. Personally, I found them remarkable.

You have to have a really morbid curiosity to view these images. Personally, I found them remarkable.

Certainly this is a morbid subject and the book is no ray of sunshine, but I found many of the photographs were actually quite touching. Burns also briefly introduces the reader to earlier photographic methods and the industry of memorial photography, which (I was surprised to learn) has experienced a slight revival in the 21st century. He includes some modern memorial photos at the end. I also liked that he had not just photos from the United States but from various locations in Europe as well.

A lot of people find memorial photography morbid – if you stumble across a Facebook account where death photography is discussed or reproduced, the comments range from an appreciation of the history to people thinking the parents long ago were insane or that the whole thing in general is somehow morally wrong or gross. “Ewww! Why would anyone want to take a picture of a dead person?” As much as I dislike it when people react to these pictures from a strictly modern sensibility or a squeamish quasi-morality, I often have a hard time explaining why it is such images appeal to me. Burns does his best to explain why these images may seem so jarring:

"It is difficult for most of us today to understand the prior culture’s need to take memorial photographs. We no longer live with personal death and dying as part of our everyday lives. By the 1930s, dealing with death had been left to professionals ranging from physicians to morticians. The advance of medicine, control of killer epidemics, the ability to treat disease, and the removal of the sick from the home made us unaccustomed to living with and seeing death. Children dying before parents, something so common in the nineteenth century, has become unusual in the twentieth century."

He goes on:

"Memorial postmortem photographs have deep meaning for mourners. These keepsakes become special icons that help survivors move through the bereavement process. Healthy grieving ultimately distances us from the dead. The human bond, our connection with others, is mankind’s strongest guiding emotion and thus influences our fears and actions. These images represent confrontation with our loved one’s mortality and our own."

I would like to think this fear of death that these images can provoke is behind the “Yuck!” reactions people sometimes express.

You can read my entire discussion here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/sleeping-beauty-iii-by-stanley-r-burns-m-d/

"We believe Deadly Intent will be enjoyed as much for its detailed text as for its dramatic photographs," Stanley and Sara Burns wrote in the introduction to this book. For me, at least, that was spot-on -- the photographs are lovely, yes, but it's the informative captions that make this book really stand out. This book is not a gore-fest. Oh, it's gory all right, but everything is very tastefully presented and it's clear the authors intend to educate and enlighten the reader, not jut shock them. HIGHLY recommended.½

An interesting and unusual topic, unfortunately a very poorly written and edited book (was it even edited at all??). It's chock full of typos and the writing style is very stiff and uncreative, and it doesn't delve into much depth--it is written by an opthamologist and collector, but not a scholar. He spends much time elaborating on the monetary value of the tintypes and frames, but is not very articulate about the artistic and cultural value of the items. Additionally, the author takes on a very self-congratulatory tone, repeating throughout how he's the only one to ever consider the importance of painted tintypes.

It does have a lot of color illustrations of the author's collection as well as other 19th century photographs and frames. For that, the book is worth taking a look at.

This book of death photography from the Stanley Burns archives alternately is heart-breaking and fascinating. I tended to focus on the pictures of dead children because, or course, they are the saddest, but this book also contains death photos of crime victims, bad men and people who simply died and were mourned. You can read more of my review of this book at: http://ireadoddbooks.com/?p=19

To be discussed soon on IROB.