Rare Photo Collection: "Sleeping Beauty" - Photographs of the Dead in America, 1990

The practice of photographing people immediately after death began very early on, coinciding with the announcement of the daguerreotype's invention and the establishment of portrait studios across various locations.
Advertisements from early photography studios often promoted the taking of "post-mortem portraits" alongside portraits of the living.
"Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America" is the most systematic and high-quality anthology of this type of photography.
Selected from a collection of over 20,000 photographs belonging to Dr. Barnes, an ophthalmologist in New York, this collection vividly illustrates how people confronted and sublimated the absolute reality of death.
In the photograph "A Mother Mourning Her Dead Daughter," the deceased child is posed as if alive, attempting to alleviate the grief.
(From the magazine Taiyo, special feature "Think of Death. Memento Mori," 1992)

- Title: Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America
- Published: 1990
- Publisher: twelvetrees press

*I have carefully stored this item wrapped in tracing paper since the time of purchase, but there are some minor scratches on the front and back covers due to aging.

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