Beautiful Death: The Art of the Cemetery (Penguin Studio Books)

"While based in Paris, David Robinson roamed the cemeteries of Europe. Over a period of two years he took more than ten thousand photographs of cemeteries, including Pere-Lachaise, Montparnasse, and Montmartre in Paris, the cemeteries of London and village churchyards in England, the Jewish Cemetery in Prague, and cemeteries across France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. He sought out the strange, affecting beauty of tombs, the poignant signs of loss, mourning, and separation, and the aspirations to afterlife and reunion in the beyond. In his images we see the fleeting gestures of defiance against oblivion - the claims of the living on behalf of the dead - in the clasping of hands, proffered kisses, fading flowers, beaded wreaths, even where a passerby has rouged the lips of a pining figure carved in stone." "Dean Koontz has written a deeply moving memoir of his parents that tells of their troubled relationship and of a family mystery sealed by the grave. An intriguing, perhaps life-saving telephone call offers the ring of hope, the elusive promise of afterlife."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (more)