Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America [Hardcover]

Stanley Burns (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 132 pages
• Publisher: Twelvetrees Pr; First edition (November 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0942642325
• ISBN-13: 978-0942642322
• Product Dimensions: 12.5 x 9.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,738,868 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars disturbing, yet poignant and beautiful at times, May 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (Hardcover)

I was interested to find "Sleeping Beauty" after reading about it on the webpage of the PBS documentary "Death In America," which was based on this book. Unfortunately, I discovered it was out of print, but managed to borrow a copy through an interlibrary loan. I found it to be utterly fascinating. Some of the photos were beautifully done, resembling quietly sleeping children, while others were quite disturbing as the subjects were very obviously deceased. Particularly shocking were a pair of photos, one of a little boy lying on a bed with his toy ball, staring sadly at the camera, and another of the same boy after death. It is a sad reminder of the fact that the infant mortality rate during this time was so high, and often these were the only portraits the family might have of a child. It is incredible to think that a family might treasure such mementos, but I think of the now fairly commonplace practice of photographing miscarried or stillborn babies, and understand to an extent the need to have "proof" that this person existed.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death In America, August 8, 2000

By 

Debra McFadden (Point Of Rocks, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (Hardcover)

Dr. Stanley Burns, author of "Sleeping Beauty" and I produced "Death In America, A Chronological History Of Illness and Death" which is based on Sleeping Beauty and includes many of the images from the book. The Burns Archive, which houses the collected images, is the single largest privately held collection of photographs in the world. With more than 500,000 images, the collection specializes in post-mortum and medical photograhy (ref: Ken Burns "Civil War" - no family relation). Death In America has been airing nationally on public television since 1998 and can be seen at www.deathinamerica.com. The type post-mortum photography chronicled in Sleeping Beauty was very expensive and nearly always a great sacrifice on the part of the family. If, as an example, you were a farmer in 1850 making a few dollars each month, one photograph could easily cost you several months pay. It is virtually impossible for us today to understand the pre-photographic mind. Until the invention of photography the average family had no way to hold a keepsake of their loved one. This one image was so precious an object that they were worn as jewelry and in later years even sent to relatives as post cards. One of the most important aspects of "Sleeping Beauty" is Dr. Burns' historical chronology which describes each image, tells the story behind the image and gives the reader a real sense of the social and cultural influences of the time. Examples include physicians keeping grave-robbers on retainer for over 250 years, the Bayer Company inventing Heroin, the development of the germ-theory of disease and the editor of the Ladies Home Journal creating the "Living Room". Death In America has to date been seen by approximately 45 million viewers. In September of 2000, PBS will begin running a new program on death by Bill Moyers. Many stations will run Death In America as a companion piece. If anyone wishes to contact the producers of our program they can respond to our e-mail at [e-mail].

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book is amazing, October 19, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (cape girardeau missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (Hardcover)

I first saw this book when I was working in a library about three years ago. Now that I've decided to purchase it, I come to find it is no longer being published. Although it is a little disturbing at first it shows death as a part of life, as it used to be at the turn of the century.