Editorial Review:

Forgotten Faces - A Window Into Our Immigrant Past reveals, for the first time, lost American history encapsulated in a beautiful but neglected art form. Forgotten Faces is the first book to explore memorial portraiture as a distinctive art form and acknowledge its contribution to our country's valued history. In doing so, it reveals a never-before-published photo-panorama of American immigration at the turn of the twentieth century.

Forgotten Faces presents a first-ever collection of over 350 well-preserved photo-ceramic memorial portraits. The beginning of a series titled, Forgotten Faces - America's Lost History, it demonstrates how a similarly beautiful collection of memorial portraits awaits discovery and exhibition from every major city in the United States.

Photo-Ceramic memorial portraits are photographs of the deceased mounted directly on their tombstones. They are made of ceramics the quality of the finest china but made to last outdoors for centuries. This edition now includes 10 pages of color plates - including rare images of immigrants from 28 different nations. It includes examples from Colma, California's historic Holy Cross and Italian cemeteries as well as other U.S. and European locations.

Forgotten Faces details the technology, history and cultural influence of memorial portraits as both art and artifact. Forgotten Faces alerts readers to the fact these treasured artifacts are vanishing from our heritage and recommends methods for documenting them before they disappear.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0

California immigrant history brought to life!:

Galleys and unfinished titles typically aren't mentioned here but keep an eye out for the finished version of FORGOTTEN FACES: A WINDOW NTO OUR IMMIGRANT PAST: it's a unique coverage of photo-ceramic memorial grave portraits and provides an outstanding survey of memorial portraiture as its own art form. This could have been mentioned under our art review section but is featured here for its important cultural insights as well: California immigrant history comes to life in an outstanding visual and written... more info

Explores a unique aspect of America's history:

Forgotten Faces explores a unique aspect of America's history - the photo-ceramic memorial portraits upon tombstones, long-forgotten art in plain sight. Black-and-white photographs througout reveal the skill and emotion behind these images, which remain perfectly preserved despite ornamenting tombstones for almost a century. The text discusses epitaphs and inscriptions on the tombstones with the portraits, as well as surveying what is known about the men and women whose likenesses have been captured to... more info

A Unique Glimpse Into Past Lives:

Forgotten Faces offers a surprisingly detailed look into our history. The text is easily read. Although the portraits are the heart of the book, the author's descriptions and insights enliven the images.
I was impressed by the breadth of knowledge about the portraits. Questions I had while reading were often answered in a following chapter. The book is a pleasantly thorough treatment of a little known area of our history.
This book has left me with a new outlook on memorials in general and... more info