Morbid Fascination.
Although I've always had a morbid sensibility, something which comes in no small part from growing up as the scion of a family of undertakers, photographic documentations of death have always struck me as well... odd. There's a discomfort involved for most people in such images. Decay of the flesh and the vacuity of the eye sockets often makes people cringe. It's a strange game of empathy, or narcissism as least, though the two things are essentially interchangeable. However, for me, being familiar with corpses all of my life, wandering into Jack Burman's show at Clint Roenisch's gallery was almost like going home. That eeriness, combined with the gallery's charming colonial cottage décor, and the utter indifference to my presence demonstrated by the people running it, created a meditative atmosphere.
