New Devils Require New Gods

During the Corona spring and summer of 2020, I felt compelled to mask cemetery statues. A flaw in my personality, I suppose. I didn’t leave the masks on and I did no damage in the act. Initially, I don’t know why I did it. I published a few images and received a handful of comments from upset people. 

Comments like “I was saddened by our beautiful Angels with paper masks covering their exquisite faces - the angels should not be weighted down by human error.”

Exquisite faces, indeed. After months of people wearing masks, I miss all your exquisite faces. I meant no disrespect by masking angels. We created them in our own image, after all. Or more accurately, we created them in our idealized, Western world Christian image. Angels – both male and female, are the supermodels, the Barbie and Ken perfect versions of our white selves. Since we must now mask ourselves and hide our beautiful faces, I wanted to see what these icons looked like, masked. If we must mask, why shouldn’t they? But you know, if we all end up wearing masks for the next year, maybe we NEED unmasked, beautiful statues to remind us of the way things were? Of the goal, the way things should be? Are they a sign of hope? Optimism? Maybe I’m taking this away from people by masking them. 

“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.”― Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art

I suppose I need to be careful, though - blasphemy and heresy are no laughing matter. In past centuries, such an act could get you killed, defacing statues or paintings of the gods, or public figures. But as Louise Erdrich says in her novel, Tracks, (1989, Harper & Row), “new devils require new gods.” I’m not going to define this statement for you right now. Take from it what you will. Perhaps its about our response to the coronavirus pandemic. When I create art, I want the viewer to take what they can from it. Most likely it speaks to them differently than it speaks to me. I have always defined my art as minimally as possible – I want the viewer to find their own meaning in it. I don’t even like to title my photographic images. Even that narrows things down too much.

Erdrich’s novel, Tracks, is about Indian (yes, she uses that proper name) tribes “struggling to keep what remained of their lands” in last century America. Native American land and all other freedoms were slowly taken from them very much like our present freedoms are slowly being taken from us by coronavirus. We are struggling to keep what remains of our world. Big difference, however, is that while the white settlers of this “new” land benefitted greatly from the indigenous peoples’ loss, no one benefits from the loss due to COVID-19. Unless, of course, it is some evil plot hatched by the spotted lanternfly.

Would George Washington Wear a Face Mask in 2020? No!

People thought I would have more respect for angels and other works of art - I might just as well have “purchased a can of spray paint & had [my] way with these historic & immortal figures!” (“Immortal,” let’s come back to that thought later.) One could say the same of the person who doctored up this painting of George Washington, I suppose. But its all about having the freedom to express oneself, to make a point. Here’s an image below that should really rile up the masses. Old folks need to protect them selves from their kids, who may be asymptomatic COVID-carriers. 

One of the problems with freedom is that people are free to believe anything they like. For months, there was no consistent, insistent decree from our nation’s leaders that we should wear face masks to stop the spread of coronavirus. Should we or shouldn’t we? We were free to believe whatever suited us. Now, of course, it is becoming quite clear that face masks should have been worn all this time. (Wait – shouldn’t our guardian angels have appeared in masks to carry us to salvation? Sorry, getting a bit sarky there.) 

Tensions Mount 

The raw emotion that has surfaced over my masked statuary is a good thing. Isn’t that what art is supposed to do? Make you think? Make you emote? Maybe you love it, hate it, or are indifferent. Maybe that’s how you also view the whole face mask thing in general. 

The issues people have with wearing masks are multitudinous. George Hofmann in his Psych Central article, The Fight Over Facemasks, mentions a few of these. “The science behind wearing a mask seems pretty simple, and among scientists and doctors there’s near universal agreement that wearing masks will prevent transmission and greatly reduce the number of people who contract the virus.” If you don’t believe this, go watch movies about hospitals and research labs.

Hofmann adds, “That’s why I think there’s a lot more to the anger over masks than respect for the health of others or individual liberties.” People’s anger and rage is evident by the almost daily reports like this, an incident that occurred on July 31, 2020. A customer of a cigar store in Bethlehem, PA, shot at the clerk with a handgun when the customer got upset over the store’s masking policy (link to story).

In this chaotic time - new devils require new gods. New problems require new solutions (one interpretation of this statement). The masking quarrel reminds me of the story of Dr. Charles Meigs, a nationally recognized Philadelphia obstetrician, who in the 1850s singlehandedly transmitted infectious and sometimes deadly diseases to hundreds of his patients. Why? He didn’t believe in washing his hands! He didn’t believe he needed to clean his surgical instruments. He didn’t believe there were such things as infectious diseases. He felt that God was on his side, and he could do no wrong! God, can you believe that? Meigs inadvertently killed many of his obstetrical patients as a result of his stubbornness and grandstanding. He simply refused to believe what we all now know, that a basic way to prevent the transmission of infectious disease is good hand hygiene.  (Read the whole Meigs story in my blog post, “Infectious Diseases and Charles Meigs, M.D.”)

Dr. Charles Meigs's grave, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

As I write this in August 2020, we are really still in the discovery phase of this disease, coronavirus. We don’t know how to control it yet, so why argue about face masks? Why not just err on the side of caution? How many of our politicians remind you of Dr. Meigs? How much of our general population reminds you of Dr. Meigs?

George Hofmann offers that the real source of anger is usually hidden behind what we’re fighting over. He opines that “people have felt disaffected and forgotten by the society they see portrayed in the media for a long time.” Sound familiar? As average citizens, we just don’t measure up to the media ideal of ourselves. We are not, nor ever will be, Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. Hofmann feels that people generally feel ignored, mere background noise. Proles. He says that putting a mask over their faces, “making them anonymous and unheard [literally], can be a source of great anger.”

We created angels in our ideal image – maybe that’s one reason its so hard to see them masked. The goals of purity, perfection, and escape (perhaps only attainable in the afterlife?) all of a sudden may not seem possible. “Immortality,” as mentioned earlier, may now seem impossible. By masking angels, am I symbolically closing the Heavenly Gates on the viewer? Am I suggesting, as John Cale does in his song, Fear, that “we’re already dead, just not yet in the ground…?” 

But I want to end this missive on a high note, something optimistic. How about this: new devils require new gods. Think about that. 

Further Reading:

George Hofmann’s book Resilience: Handling Anxiety in a Time of Crisis (2020, Changemakers Books), is available here.

Photographing Cemetery Snow

I’m not one of those people who accepts the lemons life gives you and makes lemonade. I’d rather just smash them against a wall, then take a photograph. Still, I do manage to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself. Last Saturday they were forecasting snow, so I wanted to make a quick trip to a local cemetery and shoot some snow angels. Unfortunately, I had a “million things to do,” as my father used to say.

The roof leaked water the day before during a rainstorm, so I needed to get up there with a ladder to investigate. So the morning of the snow, I was up there searching for shingle damage when I noticed a ten-foot length of rain gutter missing. Wind must have blown it off. After it landed on the ground, the old Chinese woman who collects aluminum cans from our trash must have spirited it away. So off I went to Home Depot for a gutter and accessories.

It was on my way home from Home Despot that it began to snow. Decisions must be made − photography or more water damage to my house? Normally, I’d choose the former. But guilt is a prime motivator, and since several pair of my wife’s shoes were ruined by the water leak, I must resolve this first. The cemetery would have to wait.  I took solace in the words of  the (third century B.C.) philosopher Mencius: "I desire fish and I desire bear's paws. If I cannot have both of them, I will give up fish and take bears' paws."

Entrance Gate, Woodlands Cemetery, Philadelphia

After about a half hour of sliding around on the roof attaching the gutter, I packed up my photo gear and headed out to Woodlands Cemetery in West Philly. A gorgeous Victorian sculpture garden, with two hours of daylight left. Woodlands holds the distinct honor of being the first cemetery that I got myself accidentally locked into – see my blog posting “Trapped in a Cemetery.” That was a decade ago, I believe. Since then, I pay close attention to the “Closing Time” noted at front entrances of cemeteries. In fact, Woodlands has a lovely big old iron entrance gate with an hourglass design. This reminds me that my time is short, in more ways than one.

Drexel Mausoleum

I spent about an hour slowly driving slowly around Woodlands in the snow, thoroughly enjoying the experience. From the old eroded marble monuments to the Gothic mausoleums, snow just makes everything look better, cleaner, prettier (a notion that I, incidentally, did not hold when I lived in snowbound upstate New York). Woodlands even boasts the family mausoleum of one of America’s only three (American-born) saints. The Drexel family mausoleum, behind the Neoclassical estate house, contains relatives of Saint Katharine Drexel. Her body itself resides not here, but at the Saint Katharine Drexel Shrine in Bensalem, PA (northeast Philadelphia).

Woodlands in West Philadelphia is situated near 40^th Street and Baltimore Avenue (click here for map), by the Veterans Hospital at the edge of the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve seen more pedestrians stroll this old graveyard than any other in the city. I suppose this is because it is situated in a densely-populated area and is the closest “park,” of sorts, in that vicinity. It more than serves its original intended purpose –a bucolic getaway, a beautiful sculpture garden and park, where bodies just happened to be buried (Woodlands was established in 1840). In the fifteen years I’ve been coming here, I have yet to see anyone actually visiting a grave! So on this cold, late December afternoon, I shared the roadways with at least half a dozen people – joggers, strollers, and people walking their dogs – through snow squalls.

Fast shutter speed (1/125 sec.)

It was snowing rather lightly during the hour of my visit, and I made several photographs from inside my car (heat on, windows down). However, there was a ten-minute interlude in which the snow fell hard. These were exactly the conditions under which I wanted to make photographs.

Slow shutter speed (1/8 sec.)

I’ll admit I was caught up in the moment. I wasn’t in precisely the exact location where I wanted to be to shoot the statuary I wanted, but when the snow began falling harder, I figured it could stop any minute.  So I had better start shooting. I composed a few scenes and clicked them off. Shot at ISO 400 as I wanted good resolution. Lighting was rather dim so I was using an aperture around f8. This allowed a shutter speed of  1/125 second, which, as you can see from the photo above, fairly successfully froze the falling snow. I intentionally slowed the shutter speed down to 1/8 second to allow the falling snow to form streaks (see photo at right), just to see what this effect was like.

Pretty much everyone knows that auto-focus cameras can be tricked, and need to be tricked under certain circumstances.Why? Sommetimes they will focus on something other than your intended subject. These are the situations in which you want to make them focus on something other than what they prefer. For example, if you’re shooting out of a car window and the window is wet or dirty, the camera will likely close-focus on the rivulets of water or the dirt, not the deer out in the field you wanted it to. Or with the photo at left, you would really have to do some work to get your camera to focus on the foreground headstones instead of the background tree.

The fact is that auto-focus cameras tend to focus on contrasty things, rather than the position of a particular subject. To trick the camera (or perhaps, behave the way you want it to), you can either switch to manual focus and adjust accordingly, or choose one of your camera’s pre-focused “Scene” modes. In the example of shooting out the dirty window at a distant subject, you could choose the camera's "landscape" mode (usually indicated by a small icon of a mountain range). Your choice may not be perfect, but you need to make some compensation to override the camera’s auto-focus system. This is precisely what I did not do during the snow squall.

It was not until I was reviewing my images on the computer that I realized the focus was off in the falling snow shots. My intent was to focus on the angel statue (in the two images above). What I didn’t realize at the time was that the falling snow would throw off the camera’s auto-focus. Now this seemingly trivial bit of information can be crucial if you find yourself in a similar situation. Therefore I selflessly share with it with you, my fellow Cemetery Travelers. So take it and may it serve you well.

So why does the falling snow throw your auto-focus into a tizzy? The same way the dirty glass window does. When I pointed my camera lens at the angel statue and expected the focusing system to lock onto it (through the open window of my car), there was a wall of falling snow between it and my camera. I’ll estimate the statue was thirty yards away. That means there was a thirty-yard-thick wall of randomly falling snow between the statue and my camera. Let’s call it an infinite number of potential focusing points. The fact that I got anything worthwhile is simply astounding.

Amtrak train zipping by Woodlands Cemetery

How should I compensate for this in the future, and why did I not notice the unsharpness on my DSLR’s image display? Well first of all, even if you have a three-inch LCD display on your camera back, you’d be hard-pressed to tell if something was in focus or not – the display is too small and the resolution is too low. What I should have done was crank my ISO up higher (maybe to 1600) so that I could use a smaller aperture (f16, perhaps, instead of f8).  At the shutter speeds I was using, this would have allowed a greater depth of field, which would have made it more likely that more of the objects in the scene would be in focus (including the angel statue). Of course, with all this modern technology, I’m not sure why the camera cannot be programmed to just say, “There’s no way I can focus through this, Dave.”
 

The Woodlands' Neoclassical Estate House

An ISO of 1600 would decrease my resolution, of course, but with an image as busy as the snow falling around the angel statue, you’d be hard-pressed to notice even on a large print. Also, the larger your digital camera’s image sensor, the less of an issue this becomes (bigger sensor, better resolution). During the time I was at Woodlands, I photographed out the window of my car as it was very cold, windy, and snowing most of the time. The only exception was when I got out with an umbrella over my head to shoot down at this reclining female form. When I posted the image on the Facebook site, “Sensual Cemetery Art,”the famous cemetery photographer and writer Doug Keister commented, “Accomplished photographers go out when others go in.”

So, to sum up the Woodlands as a destination site: any cemetery photographer would revel in the plethora of architectural details here – grave art abounds. From the hourglass with wings on the entrance gate to the restored estate house in the back, there is plenty of interesting subject matter here – add snow and it becomes a 54-acre-wonderland. And if you just want to jog around the place, you can do that too.

If you choose to visit:
Woodlands Cemetery website

Cemetery Photography Books

I was just sitting here this morning munching a bowl of Cap'n Sucrose, looking at my bookcase full of cemetery books. Over the years, I've amassed quite a few of them. I thought I'd share some of the titles with you in case you need a couple to round out your collection.  Most are cemetery-related photography books, but some deal with the broader subjects of death, burial, and mourning practices. Topics that seem to be of interest to most cemetery photographers.

There are many more books out there and I welcome suggestions to add to the list. With rare exception, these are just the books I myself own. Also bear in mind that many cemeteries themselves have published their own books.

Before I begin the list (in alphabetical order), I have to pay special homage to the book that started it all for me, what I consider to be the bible of cemetery memorial photography: Going Out in Style - The Architecture of Eternity by Douglas Keister. His was my first purchase of a book of this kind, and a decade later, I feel it has no equal. This wonderful hardbound volume is full of color photos as well as knowledgeable and entertaining text. (Visit Doug Keister on Facebook.)

Cemetery Photography Book List:

Angels by Marcia Lippman
Thirty postcards, hand-tinted images.

A Retrospective by George Krause
Half of these fine art images by photographer George Krause are death related--tombstone death portraits, monuments, and South American icon statues. Fabulous introduction.

Beautiful Death by David Robinson and foreward by Dean Koontz
Fabulous color photos of European cemetery memorials with a shockingly lucid and introspective intro by horror writer Dean Koontz.

Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts - A History of Burial by Penny Colman
With photos and text, Colman balances grim facts about embalming and mourning with accounts of curious and witty gravestones and eccentric burial requests, turning the otherwise dark material into entertaining reading.

Death--A History of Man's Obsessions and Fears by Robert Wilkins
Very entertaining and informative yet somewhat gruesome! Mostly text. Possibly the most interesting book of its kind I've read.

Death - A User's Guide by Tom Hickman
Cute little pocket-size book covers famous last words, quirky undertaker tales, bizarre burials, etc. All text. Perfect gift for the cemetery photographer!

Ghosthunter - A Journey Through Haunted France by Simon Marsden
Glorious black and white infrared photos by one of the true masters of the medium. Castles and cemeteries, with text. (Simon Marsden on the Web.)

Mourning Art and Jewelry by Maureen DeLorme
If all you photograph are tombstones, you'll be amazed at the galaxy of Victorian funerary art that has been hidden from public view for a century.

Philadelphia Area Cemeteries by Allan M. Heller
An interesting book of text and photos that offers short histories, legends, and hauntings related mainly to small, obscure cemeteries in the Philadelphia "area," rather than the better-known larger Philadelphia city cemeteries.

Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries by Thomas H. Keels
Very informative, albeit local, documentation of many of the region's burial grounds, both extant and long gone.

Postmortem Collectibles by C.L. Miller
Half photos, half text. Covers everything, from embalming chemicals to tombstones! One of the few books in print that features once popular photographic portraits of the deceased.

Saving Graces by David Robinson
Photo essay on the art of sensual statues in European cemeteries. Many cemeteries in Europe are strewn with shockingly sensual sculptures of women. They are idealized creations--young, gorgeous, elaborately posed, and beautifully sculpted. Robinson's exquisite photographs reveal the angelic beauty and mystery of these lifelike sculptures.

Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America - by Stanley Burns
Perhaps the most eye-opening, yet shocking book of vintage corpse photography in existence. Sorry, death portrait photography. Expensive, but amazing!

Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement in Memorial Photography by Stanley Burns and Elizabeth A. Burns
The only book in this list I haven't read or even seen. If its anything like Burns' prior book, it should be awesome.

My apologies to the alphabet--allow me a taxonomic entry, if you would: I felt it appropriate to follow the Sleeping Beauty books with a few of Joel-Peter Witkin's. His contemporary fine art  corpse photography gives new meaning to the term "still life."
Forty Photographs
Gods of Earth and Heaven 
Songs of Experience
The Bone House  

Soul in the Stone - Cemetery Art from America's Heartland by John Gary Brown
This is a large hardback volume of mostly photos, with some text. Epitaphs, unusual statuary, and childrens' monuments are prominent features.

Stone Angels - A Celebration of the Mourning Arts by Ed Snyder (yes, yours truly!)
A book of text and original photography celebrating the grandeur of Victorian funerary art and its most notable subject, the cemetery angel. These ubiquitous denizens of the garden cemetery lend themselves to transformation into powerful photographic imagery. In travelling the world (well, some of it), Ed Snyder reports back with his funereal findings and shares new artwork that he has created in these Victorian sculpture gardens.

Stairway to Heaven: The Final Resting Places of Rock’s Legends by J.D. Reed, Maddy Miller
Interesting color photos of various rock stars' and other musicians' graves. The text won't reveal anything to you about your favorite band that you don't already know. (Read the review on my StoneAngels.net site.)

Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography by Douglas Keister
For my money, the best handbook of cemetery memorial symbolism you can buy. High quality paper stock with many color photos.

The Best of Silent Cities by Jeane Trend-Hill
A photo book featuring some of the most interesting and unusual monuments photographed during the last five years by renowned memorial photographer Jeane Trend-Hill. Check out her entire series of cemetery photography books at http://www.lulu.com/.)

The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult by Clement Cheroux et al.
Fabulous photographs and text from "spiritualists" of the late 1800's. When photography was new and magical, it was believed that it could record the spirits of the dead on film. (Read the review on my StoneAngels.net site

The American Resting Place by Marilyn Yalom
400 years of American history through cemeteries and burial grounds; photos and text.

Your Guide to Cemetery Research by Sharon Debartolo Carmack
Written by a genealogist and an admitted cemetery addict, the book of photos and text addresses a specialized area of genealogical research that can yield a wealth of historical and ancestral information. Chapters cover capturing a tombstone's information, epitaphs and poetry, and the value (and pitfalls) of cemetery transcription and preservation projects.

"StoneAngels" -- The Book!

Stone Angels by Ed Snyder | Make Your Own Book