Books and Articles

Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life
Written by Joanna Ebenstein
TarcherPerigee (2024). More here.

Talking about death has been deemed morbid, taboo, or even pathological. But in order to fully embrace life, scientists, psychologists, and spiritual leaders all agree—contemplating death is the key to living a life with meaning. This life-changing book will give you a 12 week program to befriend death in your own way, creating your own personal, daily meditation on what it means to be mortal.

Cabarets of Death: Death, Dance and Dining in Early Twentieth-Century Paris
Written by Mel Gordon, edited by Joanna Ebenstein
Strange Attractor Press (2024). More here.

Cabarets of Death documents three idiosyncratically macabre cabaret-restaurants in Montmartre, each with its own grotesque portrayal of the afterworlds of Hell, Heaven, and Nothingness. With original images and drawings from contemporary journals, postcards, tourist brochures, and menus, Mel Gordon leads a tour of these idiosyncratically macabre institutions.

Frederik Ruysch and His Thesaurus Anatomicus: A Morbid Guide
Edited by Joanna Ebenstein, translation by Richard Faulk, illustrations by Eleanor Crook
MIT Press. 2022. More and order signed copy here.

A lavishly illustrated guide to the magnum opus of the great seventeenth-century anatomist, master embalmer, artist, and collector of specimens.



Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy
Written by Joanna Ebenstein
Laurence King, 2020. More and order signed copy here.

For centuries, humankind has sought to know itself through an understanding of the body. This fascination left in its wake a rich body of artworks that demonstrate not only the facts of the human body, but also the ways in which our ideas about the body and its proper representation have changed over time. Anatomica brings together some of the most striking, fascinating and bizarre anatomical artworks from the 14th through to the 20th century.

Death: A Graveside Companion
Edited by Joanna Ebenstein, Foreword by Will Self
Featuring the Richard Harris Art Collection
Thames and Hudson, 2017
368 pages, 1,000 illustrations in color and black and white
More about the book here; order here, order signed copy here.

The ultimate death compendium, with over 1000 images of extraordinary artistic objects concerned with mortality, together with text by expert contributors.

The Anatomical Venus: Wax, God, Death & the Ecstatic 
Written and with many photographs by Joanna Ebenstein
Thames and Hudson and DAP, 2016
224 pages, over 250 images
More about the book here; order signed copy here.

Highly illustrated exploration of the Anatomical Venus, a life-sized dissectible wax woman Created in 18th century Florence. Features over 250 images―many never before published―gathered by its author from around the world.

The Morbid Anatomy Anthology 
Edited (with Colin Dickey), art directed and designed, photo researched and published by Joanna Ebenstein (Funded via Kickstarter)
Morbid Anatomy Press. 491 pages, 2014. More here. Order here.

28 lavishly illustrated essays by rogue scholars, artists, and outsider thinkers such as Evan Michelson (star of Science Channel's hit show Oddities); Simon Chaplin (Wellcome Collection) Ask a Mortician’s Caitlin Doughty, Mel Gordon (author of Voluptuous Panic), John Troyer of the Centre for Death and Society, and much more.

Walter Potter's Curious World of Taxidermy
Written (with Dr Pat Morris), edited, photographed, art directed and designed by Joanna Ebenstein
Constable and Robinson Press. 2013. More here. Order here

Highly illustrated celebration of the work of eccentric Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter, best know for his anthropomorphic tableaux of stuffed kittens and bunnies.

SELECTED ARTICLES

For a more complete list of articles, see CV by clicking here