In an afterword to a book of Witkin's photographs Gus Blaisdell states that mortality is itself a morbid curiosity.

But I disagree. Sometimes when I am talking to people I become overwhelmed by their fragility, their brittleness, and this thought inevitably leads me to contemplate their deaths. When I met her I already knew what was going to happen. But I didn't know when. She carried her own end within her and nothing I could do or say or do would ever change that. Argument would only strengthen her resolve. And yet when I was with her I thought this intuition absurd, as if all the details of her existence could never disappear.