Saving Graces [Paperback]

David Robinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 1999

Many cemeteries in Europe are strewn with shockingly sensual sculptures of women.

They are idealized creations-young, gorgeous, elaborately posed, and beautifully sculpted. David Robinson's exquisite photographs reveal the angelic beauty and mystery of these lifelike sculptures. In her foreword, Joyce Carol Oates explores the many implications of these grief-stricken, extremely provocative female figures.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Photographer Robinson proves self-effacing in this engrossing little photo-essay. His envisioning of his subjects definitely takes second place to those subjects themselves. They are the figures of grieving women with which wealthy western European bourgeois families decorated the graves of their men. The figures are never of old or even middle-aged women; they are never portraits of family members. Rather, they are ideals, generally voluptuous and posed to evoke eroticism as well as mourning, and intended, Robinson says in an excellent afterword, to console by indicating the perfection of the life after death in which nineteenth-century Western culture maintained belief even as secularization banished church proprietorship of cemeteries, thereby allowing such fleshly monuments. Fascinating. Ray Olson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

David Robinson lives in San Francisco.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (October 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393313336
• ISBN-13: 978-0393313338
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #648,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking, December 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Saving Graces (Paperback)

I take photographs of cemetery sculpture and many of the images in this book I have seen for myself and though I have my own pictures on my walls, I think this collection of photos is "breathtaking". I had not realized the depth of sculpture in Milan cemeteries. This book contains no text on any sculpture, except its whereabouts, and it is all I need. For people like myself who find peace when wandering through a graveyard this collection makes me wish to grab my camera and go.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificient, thought-provoking photos, May 31, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Saving Graces (Paperback)

This is a beautiful book with wonderful, thought-provoking photos of weeping women, gladdened women, resting women, all kinds of women mourning a loved one. The essays by the author and by Joyce Carol Oates clarify the mystery of the sculptures and why they explain more about the living than about the dead. These photos were all taken in European cemeteries. Surely there must be a comparable book for the U.S. This one is well worth the price; it is truly exquisite.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars beautiful photos, October 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Saving Graces (Paperback)

This small book has very beautiful photographs of very emotional sculptures on graves but not much text to tell you about them.