“Remembering the dead: special viewing session with 19th and early 20th century postmortem and memorial photography in conversation with Dr. Stanley B. Burns”

Date: Thursday November 6, 2025

Time: 4:30 PM – Special viewing of photographs from the postmortem/memorial collection
Location: Medical Historical Library, Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street

5:30 PM – Beaumont Medical Club lecture
Location: The Beaumont Room, 2^nd Floor Library Wing, Sterling Hall of Medicine

Reception to follow, open to all

The Burns Archives defines postmortem photography as “the capture of a deceased loved one’s image and was a normal part of American and European culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” Join us at the Medical Historical Library for a special viewing session featuring 19^th and 20^th century postmortem/memorial photography from the Burns Archive. Dr. Stanley B. Burns, founder of the Burns Archive and an expert in this field, has been collecting postmortem/memorial photography since the 1970s and will be on hand to discuss select items. He is also the author of several books on postmortem/memorial photography, including Sleeping Beauty, Memorial in Photography in America. Dr. Burns is donating his postmortem/memorial photography collection to the Medical Historical Library, where it will join his collection of historic medical photographs.

Following the viewing session, please join the Beaumont Club for Dr. Burns’s lecture, Postmortem-Memorial Photography and its Place in Modern Medicine. In this lecture, Dr. Stanley Burns will present the history and use of postmortem photography from photography’s earliest days in the 1840s to its implementation in present-day hospital obstetrical and pediatric culture. Through decades of interviews, lectures, exhibitions, and media appearances, Dr. Burns helped reintroduce the practice of postmortem/memorial photography to modern audiences.