PHOTOGRAPHED IN 2013 WITHIN PALERMO, SICILY’S Catacombe dei Cappuccini, the Vanitas monograph portrays fifty mummified individuals through what the artist refers to as “expressionistic lighting”—a technique that lends the images painterly intensity. Carefully considered, Rolston’s theatrically staged and lighted images balance the realities of mortal decomposition with ethereal illumination. In development for over a decade, Vanitas represents a cumulative effort to capture the fraught human relationship to death through the medium of photography.

The publication includes texts from the artist, in addition to an introductory essay by American author, photography critic and journalist Philip Gefter and a foreword excerpted from cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker’s seminal 1973 work The Denial of Death.

Printed in four colors on rich clay-coated stock, this first printing of Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits is limited to five hundred copies and is published to coincide with Rolston’s 2025 multi-venue exhibition of Vanitas.

Hardcover: 12.5 x 18 x 1.5 inches, 118 pages, 50 four-color plates.