The Mummies of Guanajuato / Ray Bradbury ; photography, Archie Lieberman

In the sleepy Mexican town of Guanajuato, with its neatly kept square and elegant neoclassical theater, 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 but with human mummies, standing with mouths agape, eye sockets staring as if they had just 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 relatives 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. But they compel viewing; they stimulate confrontation and, believe 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 mind--stuff of nightmares. No one who experiences this book will ever forget it.

English.