The mummies of Guanajuato

Bradbury Ray - story | Lieberman Archie - Photography

Published in 1978 by Harry N. Abrams, hardcover with dustjacket, illustrated.
25 x 31 cm

In the sleepy Mexican town of Guanajuato,with its neatly kept square and elegant neoclassical theatre, is one of the most bizarre and compelling galleries in the Western world. It is not a museum, for this gallery is in a cemetery; its walls lined not with art hut with human mummies, standing with mouths agape, eye rockets staring as if they had jast returned from the other side of Hell. Indeed, they have literally returned from the grave—exhumed from the dry, desert soil by cemetery keepers because relatiees of the dead were too poor to pay for maintenance.

So fascinating are these "living dead" that noted author Ray Bradbury wrote a chilling short story after seeing them; so visually arresting that photographer
Archie Lieberman was moved to quell his horror and create a pictorial record. The two artists' reactions comprise this unusual book.

The photographs call up the deepest and most provocative human emotions. They will shock, disturb and terrify. Bul they compel viewing; they stimulate confrontation and, helieve it or not, will be examined again and again.

The story, like all Bradbury's writing, quivers with tension and evokes the thoughts and feelings that reside mostly on the dark side of the mindstuff of nightmares.
No one who experiences this book will ever forget it.