The Burns Archive is a collection of over 700,000 historical photographs that document disturbing subject matter: obsolete medical practices and experiments, death, disease, disasters, crime, revolutions, riots and war. Newsweek posted a select gallery this past October, as well as a video interview and walk-through with curator and collector Dr. Stanley B. Burns, a New York opthalmologist. (Via) (Content at links may be disturbing to some.) [more inside]
posted by zarq on Apr 26, 2011 - 15 comments

Sometimes thought to be a bizarre Victorian custom, photographing corpses has been and continues to be an important, if not recognized, occurrence in American life. [more inside]
posted by brambory on Jul 23, 2010 - 33 comments

Charles Van Schaick was a photographer in Black River Falls, Wisconsin in the late 19th and early 20th Century. His work was made famous by Michael Lesy in the book Wisconsin Death Trip in which the photographs were juxtaposed with local newsreports of murder, suicide, disease, insanity, animal mutilation and other calamities plus the occasional non-morbid event. Flickr set of photos used in Wisconsin Death Trip. Some of the texts from Wisconsin Death Trip. Robert Birnbaum interviews Michael Lesy about Wisconsin Death Trip and other things. Over 2500 photographs by Charles Van Schaick owned by The Wisconsin Historical Society. [Warning: Some of the photographs are of deceased infants]
posted by Kattullus on Nov 15, 2009 - 20 comments

Victorian mourning photography, featuring the recently departed in realistic poses.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Aug 29, 2009 - 32 comments

Gather 'Round the Cadaver! : A new "coffee-table" book, Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine is a new collection of photographs documenting what happened when bored medical students of the early 1900s met the camera.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Apr 29, 2009 - 22 comments

Photographer Jeffrey Silverthorne takes beautiful, quiet photos of disquieting subject matter. His early works included two series on morgues and transvestites. [nsfw, via]
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jan 6, 2009 - 14 comments

If you were a parent, and had lost your child during birth--what would you do? Grieve--yes; mourn, of course; photograph your dead child... ? WHY? [please don't click if you're a soon-to-be-parent] [more inside]
posted by hadjiboy on Sep 26, 2008 - 93 comments

What does a man do during the last 20 years of his life? We learn what every day was like for this unnamed soul who lived through the death of John Lennon, was there for the biggest television experience ever and who saw many presidents inaugurated and witnessed some of them shot.
It might have been because of the holidays or just to fit in but sometime around the early 80's he began smoking. Throught the 90's his health declined and eventually the illness took over.
What must we think about the Star Trek fan with a surreal taste for art and who loved pasta? I'm not sure, but I am certainly thankful for the images.
posted by MikeonTV on May 21, 2008 - 68 comments

Remember Me. A multimedia documentary about one family's struggle to deal with the loss of a parent. This series is the 2008 Pulitzer winner for feature photography. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Apr 10, 2008 - 27 comments

Life Before Death - (from the site) "This sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living."
posted by blue_beetle on Apr 1, 2008 - 67 comments

"Everything is foggy. Everything is not clear. He was alive when we got to the other side. And now I have brought him back dead. Whatever hopes we had, that's where they ended."
The Summer of the Death of Hilario Guzman (BugMeNot)
posted by matteo on Sep 3, 2006 - 13 comments

Memento Mori : both in Europe and The United States, post-mortem photography [pdf] was both reminder of and coping mechanism for death in the 19th century.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jun 8, 2006 - 11 comments

Their task may be depressing, but the generosity of their work is inspiring and hopefully thereputic. The photographers who are working with Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep provide their services on a volunteer basis to help families over come the grief of losing an infant. If you're a professional photographer interested in being involved, they're seeking volunteers.
posted by blaneyphoto on Jun 7, 2006 - 24 comments

"To all our sisters who have committed suicide or who have been institutionalized for their rebellion."
Throughout her career, but especially in her latest and most wrenching work— Sisters, Saints, & Sibyls, the 39-minute three-screen lamentation that is a duel memoir of her sister's suicide at the age of 19 and her own mortifications of the flesh and battles with addiction—the photographer Nan Goldin has been one of the great living suicides of recent art history... Charles Baxter wrote that novelist Malcolm Lowry captured "the way things radiate just before they turn to ash." At her best Goldin does this too.
posted by matteo on Apr 7, 2006 - 10 comments

Gallery of funeral art. On this halloween weekend, a brief collection of photographs of tombstone carvings & other cemetary decorations.
posted by jonson on Oct 29, 2005 - 6 comments

Good journey, Joop. "Joop was our handsome goodhearted 'boerenfox' (farmer's fox terrier). For three good years, he lived with us in the small town of Paterswolde, The Netherlands. We found Joop in 2002 in an animal shelter in Zuidwolde. Joop was a canine supermodel." The Dog Log shows Joop's life in pictures and his human's in words. Joop passed away August 8, 2005 from cancer and has quite a following on Flickr.com. Being the owner of a 14-year-old dog, the display of support really touched me and the photos are beautiful.
posted by VelvetHellvis on Aug 9, 2005 - 10 comments

Death photography Since Good Friday is pretty much all about death, how about a look at memento mori, otherwise known as postmortem photography? Some are heartrending, and many are quite artistic. Of course, there's an ugly side to this, too.
posted by LittleMissCranky on Apr 18, 2003 - 11 comments