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Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
A DVD and book are the latest products of Ex-Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer's solo career with contributions from author Neil Gaiman.
Text by Katie Antoniou | Published 15 June 2009

Amanda Palmer released her solo album, 'Who Killed Amanda Palmer' last year, but not feeling she had done Death justice, a DVD is released tomorrow, and the book will follow in July. If you're tired of the bland banality of regular coffee table books, then this is for you. A compilation of photographs from over the years, all feature a deceased Miss Palmer- in various states of death. Telling tales to accompany the images is Neil Gaiman, celebrated author of the Sandman graphic novels, Mirrormask, Stardust and Coraline.

"What I responded to, apart from the music, was that Amanda had been taking photos of herself dead for fourteen years, and so many of those photos were small frozen stories, and, especially with Kyle Cassidy's glorious photographs, I loved trying to turn them into stories. Some big stories, some very small stories, each story odd, each story fun to write, and each story, invariably, fatal."

Shots range from the picturesque to the disturbing; Amanda and her pal Regina Spektor slumped over a table at a concert in New York. Amanda naked, wrapped in a plastic sheet, washed up on a riverbank. Amanda's assistant Beth Hommel took many of the pictures.

"Some people were offended, some were intrigued but they all LOOKED. I want people to see this book and be appalled or amused or unnerved or even turned on. The particulars of the reaction aren't important. The important thing is that they slow down and stare."

You'd expect nothing less from a singer/artist/performer who's always defied definition. As she recently wrote on her blog, '"When you cannot joke about the darkness of life, that's when the darkness takes over."

Dazed Digital asked Miss Palmer a few suitably morbid questions.

Dazed Digital: So, who killed Amanda Palmer?
Amanda Palmer: You did. You didn't know?

DD:The worst way to die would be..
Amanda Palmer: Drowning.

DD: Sometimes I feel like killing...
Amanda Palmer: Every digital device that connects me to humankind.

DD: I'm scared of...
Amanda Palmer: Nothing.

DD:If I could contact the Dead..
Amanda Palmer: I would grab a translator and call up the Buddha.

DD: Before I die, I'd like to...
Amanda Palmer: Eat a meal that I completely foraged for myself.

DD:After I die...
Amanda Palmer: There will be some very excited earthworms.