Tuesday, May 21 at 6:30 pm
Pictures After Death: Postmortem Photography and Memorialization in 19th-Century America
Photography of the dead was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a way for mourners to visually "embalm" their loved ones. Until recently, however, this once ubiquitous genre of American photographs was largely unexplored. Dr. Stanley B. Burns, Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry, NYU Langone Medical Center, and distinguished author, archivist, and collector, has amassed the most comprehensive collection of this genre in the world and published three books on the subject: the Sleeping Beauty series. Dr. Burns will speak about how postmortem photography shaped American culture in the 19th century. Presented in conjunction with A Beautiful Way to Go: New York's Green-Wood Cemetery. Co-sponsored by The New York Academy of Medicine. » Register Now