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“Dear Paul: Death is the big one. We have to make room for other journeys and other adventures . . the subject of your book is life . . . and this material can change peoples’ lives.”—Joel-Peter Witkin
I had completed a PhD in Art History at UCLA in 2004 but had not done much with that training, other than teach some classes at local universities and generally convince my colleagues that my professional interests veered towards the bizarre and suspicious. In 2006 I found a research topic which would occupy me for the next four years. The idea for the book was born in the reception area of a Czech hostel. I had spent a day in Melnik , where I visited an extraordinary charnel house in the crypt under the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul. It was gritty and dirty—decidedly not sanitized for tourists—but the arrangements of the bones showed genius, not just in formal artistic principles, but also in their understanding of philosophy and theology. To this day, the charnel in Melnik remains one of my favorites.
That evening, at the hostel in Prague, the receptionist asked about my day. I told him I had been to an extraordinary ossuary, or kostnice in Czech, in the town of Melnik. No, he told me, it’s in Sedlec, near Kutna Hora. He was referring to the famous one, the one they call the “Bone Church,” the one everyone seems to know about and appears in all the tourist guides. The one I myself had visited a few days previously—but not on this day, because, I explained, I had been in Melnik. No, you were in Sedlec, that is where it is, he told me. How can he not know about this, I wondered as he handed me my key. How can he not know about this remarkable place, even closer than the one in Sedlec? Had not other tourists been there? I determined to find out how many more of these places there might be.
The answer was about seventy on four continents, for me to visit, photograph, and research, plus countless others I found in historic documents, grande dames which had fallen by the wayside of the passing centuries. They are presented in the book The Empire of Death, containing hundreds of those photographs and a text which not only recovers their history, but the history of the religious movement which gave birth to them. This is not a book about the macabre or death. It is a book about beauty and salvation. If you understand that when looking at these photos, then I hope you will choose to read the book.
Paul Koudounaris
April, 2011
I had completed a PhD in Art History at UCLA in 2004 but had not done much with that training, other than teach some classes at local universities and generally convince my colleagues that my professional interests veered towards the bizarre and suspicious. In 2006 I found a research topic which would occupy me for the next four years. The idea for the book was born in the reception area of a Czech hostel. I had spent a day in Melnik , where I visited an extraordinary charnel house in the crypt under the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul. It was gritty and dirty—decidedly not sanitized for tourists—but the arrangements of the bones showed genius, not just in formal artistic principles, but also in their understanding of philosophy and theology. To this day, the charnel in Melnik remains one of my favorites.
That evening, at the hostel in Prague, the receptionist asked about my day. I told him I had been to an extraordinary ossuary, or kostnice in Czech, in the town of Melnik. No, he told me, it’s in Sedlec, near Kutna Hora. He was referring to the famous one, the one they call the “Bone Church,” the one everyone seems to know about and appears in all the tourist guides. The one I myself had visited a few days previously—but not on this day, because, I explained, I had been in Melnik. No, you were in Sedlec, that is where it is, he told me. How can he not know about this, I wondered as he handed me my key. How can he not know about this remarkable place, even closer than the one in Sedlec? Had not other tourists been there? I determined to find out how many more of these places there might be.
The answer was about seventy on four continents, for me to visit, photograph, and research, plus countless others I found in historic documents, grande dames which had fallen by the wayside of the passing centuries. They are presented in the book The Empire of Death, containing hundreds of those photographs and a text which not only recovers their history, but the history of the religious movement which gave birth to them. This is not a book about the macabre or death. It is a book about beauty and salvation. If you understand that when looking at these photos, then I hope you will choose to read the book.
Paul Koudounaris
April, 2011
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http://www.facebook.com/empireofdeath