I bought a flatbed scanner this past year, with the
intention of scanning the thousands of cemetery negatives I shot between 1998
and 2005. I haven’t been scanning everything, but selecting specific images to
print and post on Facebook and other social media.
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| Daughter Julie holding umbrella |
Looking at a contact sheet has the ability to pull me back
to the day I made the images. Digital photography does not have this effect
on me. Sure, an individual digital image may conjure up the memories, but the
contact sheet (shoot this) can present you with your entire body of work for
the day in one glance. It’s an interesting feeling.
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| Julie enjoying a sno-cone |
One of the sheets I was scanning the other day had my
daughter Julie in some of the frames. She was about eighteen at the time (2000)
– she’ll be thirty this December! Julie would visit cemeteries with me once in
a while, often assisting me with my gear, but also making photographs herself.
The images you see here were from a particularly snowy day at Holy Cross
Cemetery in Yeadon, Pennsylvania (just outside Philadelphia, on the southwest
side). Holy Cross was a few miles from the house in which we used to live, and
was my destination of choice during inclement weather.
Why inclement weather? Living near a cemetery was great – if
it rained or snew, I’d be right there. Cemetery statues just look very
interesting and different when they’re under the duress of storm clouds or
swirling snow. From time to time, Julie would come with me to help carry my
tripod and other equipment so I wouldn’t be freezing my hands (or other body parts) off. She would also
hold a reflector or a rain umbrella over my head (and camera) so I could get
the shot I wanted.
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| Photo of Scarlet by Julie Snyder (see her website) |
It seems that dragging Julie around to cemeteries had a weird
effect on her – she lives near a different cemetery now and walks her dog there (she is very responsible, and picks up after her dog). Not so unusual,
you may be thinking; however, she plays hide-and-seek with the dog by lying
down in sunken graves! She’ll be playing with the dog and when the dog looks
away at a squirrel or something, Julie will dive down into one of those
depressions in the ground (ground settles over time as a casket deteriorates if
it’s not inside a concrete vault) and hide. The dog will whip back around
looking frantically for her and so on. You would certainly guess correctly that
this is my child.
