SLEEPING BEAUTY II : GRIEF, BEREAVEMENT AND THE FAMILY IN MEMORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY : AMERICAN & EUROPEAN TRADITIONS

New York: Burns Archive Press, 2002. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/Very good. Folio. [186] pp., including numerous black-and-white and color photographic illustrations. In English and French. Black cloth, stamped in silver, in matching black dust jacket. Signed by Stanley B. Burns on the title page and inscribed to Johnny Fox and Valeria Duarte on facing page, "Presented To Johnny & Val & The Freakatorium fellow affectionatos of the Macabre Stanley B. Burns at N.A.C. Lecture Nov 21, 2002." Light toning at edges of outer leaves. Dust jacket rubbed and lightly nicked. Near fine in a very good to fine dust jacket.

The second book of the Burns Archive's SLEEPING BEAUTY series, documenting the its collection of bereavement photography, from 19th-century daguerreotypes of port-mortem portraits to walls of missing persons fliers in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.

This copy was inscribed to Johnny Fox and his wife at the time, Valeria Duarte, in the year of publication. Johnny Fox (1953-2017) was a celebrated American sword swallower, sleight-of-hand artist, and proprietor of the Freakatorium / El Museo Loco, the first dime museum to appear in New York since the closing of Hubert's Museum in 1969. Located in a Lower East Side storefront from 1999 to 2005, the Freakatorium housed a collection of oddities, relics, photographs, and ephemera largely relating to human anomalies and sideshow performers, as well as a small reference library, of which this volume was a part.