Foto de l'autor
24+ obres 360 Membres 12 Ressenyes

Sobre l'autor

Obres de Stanley Burns

Obres associades

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Membres

Ressenyes

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.)… (més)
 
Marcat
Chica3000 | Dec 11, 2020 |
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.)… (més)
 
Marcat
Chica3000 | Hi ha 2 ressenyes més | Dec 11, 2020 |
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.
 
Marcat
Chica3000 | Hi ha 3 ressenyes més | Dec 11, 2020 |
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.
… (més)
 
Marcat
oddbooks | Oct 9, 2017 |

Potser també t'agrada

Autors associats

Estadístiques

Obres
24
També de
1
Membres
360
Popularitat
#66,630
Valoració
½ 4.3
Ressenyes
12
ISBN
22

Gràfics i taules