In many cemeteries, particularly in Europe, one can find 19th-century sculptures of idealized images of women, elaborately posed and sculpted with great care and artistic flair. David Robinson"s photographs capture the sensual beauty and mystery of these lifelike sculptures. In her foreword, Joyce Carol Oates explores the many implications of the grief-stricken, extremely provocative female figures - the obsession with mortality, the rituals of mourning, the conflation of death and the erotic, and the perfect female form as a male fantasy and a symbol of status.