With their sumptuous lighting, exquisite detail, and adroit compositions, Harry Burton's gelatin-silver prints of Tutankhamun's tomb easily surpass the gothic melodrama of Hollywood's various mummy franchises. Howard Carter made the sensational discovery of Tut's burial chambers in 1922; shortly afterward, Burton, a veteran archaeological photographer, began documenting the opulent clutter in situ, arranging mirrors and reflectors to bring light into the tomb for the first time in millennia. He eventually used 1,400 extremely fine-grained glass negatives to catalog the entire site and its individual objects. In one gorgeous shot, Anubis lies atop a shrine surrounded by walls roughly hewn from living rock; the regal god of the dead's enormous canine ears flare like a vengeful bat as it guards a heap of model boats designed to speed the boy-pharaoh on his journey to the afterlife. A close-up of the decayed mummy's chest and arms records elaborate jewels: These same13 bracelets, seen in a shot after they have been cleaned, reveal magnificent workmanship. Look closely at Burton's keenly lit detail of Tut's face carved into a coffin. The dark eyes gaze directly into ours, and this uncanny naturalism represents, if not a true afterlife, a communion that has... More >>>