The Thanatophanies portfolio was published in 1995 and contains 30 engravings that reproduce much older drawings made in 1955–1956. Ten years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while the Cold War was entering one of its tensest phases, this gallery of monstrous faces—radiated, mutilated, and deformed—distilled the anxiety of the era. Forty years later, the nuclear threat may seem less oppressive, but our fears have not diminished. The Greek title of the series—literally “death apparitions”—lends the portfolio a mythical, more universal dimension. This approach of going from the contextual to the universal is reminiscent of On Kawara’s (1933–2014) practice of inserting daily press clippings into the boxes 
of his Date Paintings. Most especially, the Thanatophanies provide a thoroughly illuminating starting point to the work of an artist who, as if overwhelmed by a sense of urgency, counted his age in days, cabled “I am still alive” to his correspondents daily, and kept records of whom he met, what he read, and where he went.