Moaning in the Gloaming

Any time of year is good for a scary story, right? This involves a visit from maybe around 2017 to the old Leverington Cemetery in Roxborough, Pennsylvania. The cemetery has been in existence since 1744 and the Church next door, with its own graveyard in back, has been around since about 1789 (ref.). The graveyard (the technical term for a churchyard burial ground) was closed to new burials in the 1980s, though the adjoining Leverington Cemetery remains active. The much larger Leverington Cemetery (about nine acres) has a gated entrance on Ridge Avenue.

It was the waning end of a crisp fall day, as I recall. Leverington is one of the few Philadelphia area cemeteries that is safe to explore in the gloaming, safe from being locked in, anyway. The main gate is missing, so anyone can wander in (or out) at their leisure. Which has been a problem, from what I’ve heard. Some have related encounters with ne’er-do-wells who had been hanging about the property, but I personally never had a problem. On this visit I was by myself. I’d been here many times over the years. I checked out the Civil War monument in the back of the cemetery and the old graves back behind the church. Made some photographs as I explored the grounds.

As I was walking behind the maintenance shed in the center of the cemetery, I heard the most god-awful moaning, and stopped short. Where could that be coming from? My blood froze. It was broad daylight, so it wasn’t TERRIBLY frightening, but still, this is a cemetery, right? Anything can happen.

Then ANOTHER god-awful moan! Traffic on Ridge Avenue is a block away; Bob’s Diner, which borders the cemetery, the same distance. No creature anywhere nearby that could make such a sound - Whisky – Tango – Foxtrot (WTF) ...!? As I slowly walked around the front of the shed, I noticed that one of the red, barn-style doors was open. I gingerly approached the opening. Maybe the moaning was coming from inside the shed? As I neared the open door, I peered inside ….. was someone hurt or dying? Was someone already dead?

What I saw came as rather a shock. A gentleman, who I took to be the groundskeeper, was sitting on a white plastic five-gallon bucket. His pants at his ankles, apparently taking a fierce dump! I assume the poor guy had nowhere else to go. 

I backed away, so as to give him his privacy, allowing him to continue to focus on this quotidian event. I made my way out of the area and out of the cemetery, vowing to always take care of business BEFORE going on any long explore. 

References and Further Reading:

https://books.google.com/books?id=161AAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://roxboroughpa.com/news/leverington-cemetery-preservation-a-family-mission-for-owner-with-deep-roxborough-roots7

Escape from an Abandoned Cemetery

As I pulled my blood-filled gloves off my hands, I contemplated the folly of jumping off the fence rather than climbing down the other side. Also, why I did this before my sprained back had completely healed will forever puzzle historians. It all started with the notion that no one would be around the abandoned cemetery on the day after Christmas. We certainly never expected to get mauled like this.

We got in with little difficulty. A very controlled climb up and over the fence, easy as a ghost leaving a man. Would anyone care that we were in here, with the main gates locked up tight and the high fencing and stone walls thwarting all but the most intrepid and curious? Hard to say. We spent about an hour or so on the grounds, photographing the brilliant decay. Fallen angels and busted mausoleums, everything overgrown with weeds and trees. The invasive and even domesticated foliage had grown so dense and with such aggression, that choking vines had pulled statues off their pedestals. There is beauty in entropy, to be sure, but when actual damage is done, the picture is quite sad.

Nature is simply reclaiming its own, as it does in abandoned amusement parks and the lands once occupied by Olympic Games. However, when a cemetery occupies the land, we consider that land more sacred. These people and their families tried in vain to preserve their memory. I don’t believe that it is enough that the occasional voyeur gets to see their monuments and statuary, to read the inscriptions on the stones in their family plots. But in the quest of making abandoned site photographs, at least some attention is being paid.

Sometimes we need to hold a mirror up to ourselves to realize how much we really don’t care about certain things. Memories forsaken – all these people were once alive, and these monuments were intended to memorialize them, so future generations would remember. We might be that "future" generation.

After exploring much of this once grand Victorian graveyard together, Rick and I temporarily went our separate photographic ways. As I was scrambling through a wilderness that was filled with monuments and tombstones, I realized a car was driving around the access road inside the cemetery! I never expected this. I threw myself to the ground and hoped the occupant (s) wouldn’t see me. The car slowly circled the dirt road and disappeared. I quietly got up, half expecting it to be parked there, but it had gone.  I saw my cohort and motioned to him to get down.

I moved through the weeds toward Rick and said, “It’s go time.” We made our way across the dirt road the car had just traversed and climbed the embankment to the denser weed cover and ultimately, the fence blocking our escape. Exactly why we were afraid of being caught is open for interpretation. We were just a couple of old guys taking pictures in an abandoned cemetery.

As we peered through the thicket of dead “mile-a-minute” weeds for a glimpse of my car, I got a glimpse of something else – a white car, sporting what appeared to be a roof rack. My guess was that it was a police cruiser. With pulses quickening, we scrambled through the high brush along the abandoned cemetery side of the fence so we could get a better look at the car parked on the opposite side – the opposite side happened to be an active and open cemetery. It is ironic that the only way to get into an abandoned place is to climb in from the adjoining active place. Again, would anyone working here have cared if they saw two guys go over the fence?

So, the white car had police lights on its roof. We needed another exit strategy. I had a “Plan B,” but it was not well thought out.

Quietly (well, as quietly as we could), we made our way through the tangle of vines and weeds and crackling tinder along the fence to a place where an old oak tree and its thick vines seemed to offer a way over the fence. I wasn’t really thinking of the way down the other side – gravity would help in that respect. The first tree didn’t have any low branches, so off we scrambled to the next one. Although vines grew up and through the old cyclone fence, they did not offer any protection at the top, where the barbed wire lay.

I climbed the tree and fence, using vines as footholds - that is, until the last vine near the top snapped under my weight. "Power through this," I thought to myself. I pulled my two hundred pounds to the point where I was balancing on top of the fence, looking out over the active cemetery next door. Not a living soul in sight and no way to climb down. Ah, my kingdom for a rope ladder …

Six feet does not seem a great height from which to jump. But it is – especially if you’re on the wrong side of fifty and not in the greatest physical shape. I hung my cameras on the barbed wire for later retrieval and threw myself off into space. I would love to see a video of this graceless act. (Maybe after we die, God will show us home movies of stupid stuff we did.) I suppose when you’re falling you subconsciously, automatically, reach out for something to hold on to. The something in my case was, unfortunately, barbed wire.

I landed it pretty poorly, falling backwards onto the ground. Rick asked if I was okay. I got up and grabbed my cameras off the barbed wire. My wife, who is always at the gym, would appreciate the fact that this experience was great cardio exercise. My heart was racing, muscles burning, etc. My inner thigh hurt as did my feet. I told Rick to hand me his cameras and find a way over the fence. I would walk over to the other side of the cemetery to draw people’s attention. Godspeed! 

It wasn’t really cold, forty-ish, and my black leather gloves felt sweaty. Upon removing them, I saw that they were squishy with blood. The barbed wire had ripped through the leather in a number of spots. I quickly put them back on – I would not want to have to explain bloody hands to a police officer in a cemetery. (Note to self: pick up bottle of spray hydrogen peroxide on way home.) It took Rick about half an hour to finally find a tree he could climb, with vines that would facilitate his descent on the other side of the fence. I kept checking back every few minutes to see if he was making any progress. He finally did it, methodically and with relative safety. He tore his clothes to shreds, but did not hurt himself and did not have to jump!

We walked as casually as two injured and exhausted men could across the clean-cut cemetery. Our intent was to approach my car from the direction opposite the fence we had just climbed. There was the cop cruiser on the roadway a little below my car. Nonchalantly, we got into my car and drove off. I don’t think either of us took a breath until we made it through the exit gate onto the highway!

The Unanswered Questions:

So was the cop just there killing time eating his lunch? Would he have cared if he had seen two old guys climbing the fence? And what was up with the driver of the car inside the abandoned cemetery? He must have had access through the locked gates. Did the driver see me? Us? It almost seems that he must have, he was so close, as he circled slowly around us. Did he call the police? Is that why the cruiser was parked near my car? If the driver saw us, perhaps he was more afraid of us than we were of him. Or maybe he was just there to toss a Christmas wreath on a grave, a wreath purchased long distance by a descendant of someone interred in this mess of a place. There always are one or two Christmas floral arrangements on the odd grave here. So I guess there are some people who do remember and respect their ancestors who were long ago buried in this overgrown jumble of a cemetery. My guess is that they have no idea that this beautifully laid out Victorian-era garden cemetery is locked up tight and has been left to grow wild and crumble.

I understand changing societal tastes, people being more mobile, less focused on the material extravagance of the wealthier ancestral plane, but don’t people want tangible reminders of their past? Perhaps, but maybe not if they have to pay for their upkeep. An abandoned cemetery is clear evidence of people wanting to escape from the whole idea of death.

You know how people conveniently “forget” things when the things are, well, inconvenient for them to address? An abandoned cemetery is a good example of “An Inconvenient Truth” - as former United States Vice President Al Gore called his campaign to educate people about global warming. There is an an inconvenient truth buried in the act of discarding, abandoning, things. Maybe abandoned-site exploration and photography are so popular because these acts attempt to get to the heart of the matter. They hold a mirror up to us, showing a reflection of something we may not necessarily want to see.

There is always a reason things are abandoned. Ghost towns sometimes became such after the gold mines had been tapped out. There are many reasons why cemeteries become abandoned. I learn about some of them as my cemetery travels take me down strange roads, and over strange fences. Although I have yet to understand the situation with the cemetery in question, there is learning to be had if you're willing to venture to the edge, and occasionally, even, to jump off.

To What Extent Would You Go To Get That Photo?

Trillian Stars, by Kyle Cassidy

To what extent would you go to get that photo? What extreme? In a blog I posted recently, ”Graves Beneath the Snow" (see link at end), I wrote about how I managed, through an arduous process, to make some photographs with which I am quite pleased. They came about serendipitously toward the end of a trying-too-hard shooting day, when I was tired, and my guard was down. These scenes, replete with shadows and fleeting light, appeared  like rabbits at dusk, popping out of their burrows to feed. The image, "Snow Waves," below is one such image. Another is "At Rest," a bit further down the page.

"Snow Waves"

"Skullroses"

The tombstones in the snow were “found” objects – still-lives, though not set up in a studio. A studio setup is challenging too (see my image, “Skullroses”), but at least with that, you usually know what you’re after. “Found” subjects are much more elusive. I remember when I was dating, I went to a rock concert with a girlfriend. I wanted to smuggle in my camera and so she offered to conceal it in her pants. That worked. This past winter, I’ve put myself through a number of physical challenges to make photographs in abandoned places. The abandoned stuff is dangerous on many levels. As artists, we strive to be original, to be uniquely creative. (The actress Tallulah Bankhead said, “Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.”) I like the photographs I’ve been able to make - I surprise myself sometimes, but it's not always easy.

Abandoned railroad car

West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

In the name of art, I went out of my way to make the most of the non-stop snowfall we’ve had this past winter (2013-14, the second snowiest winter in Philadelphia’s recorded history). Make lemonade, and all that, but don’t eat the yellow snow. I’ve avoided winter photography in the past, because it’s so damned inconvenient, cold, and difficult! Having recently done more of this than ever before, I have come to the conclusion that now that it is Spring, everything looks rather boring.

Do I always achieve my photographic goal, my Eureka! shot? Hell no. Actually and usually, no. But I keep trying. Maybe what I should do, instead, is “Don’t Try,” which was writer Charles Bukowski’s approach to creativity: just let the words flow, don’t try to make sense of them. So about those tombstones in the snow (like those below "At Rest"), and how they sort of snuck up on me when I least expected them. Folk/rock musician Neil Young says in his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, that he can’t force a song to come out. If he does, its crap. To quote Neil:

Read about Bukowski's grave in California

"At Rest"

“When I write a song, it starts as a feeling. I can hear something in my head or feel it in my heart. It may be that I just picked up the guitar and mindlessly started playing. That’s the way a lot of songs begin. When you do that you are not thinking. Thinking is the worst thing for writing a song. So you start just playing and something new comes out. Where does it come from? Who cares? Just keep it and go with it. That’s what I do. I never judge it. I believe it. It came as a gift when I picked up my musical instrument and it came through me playing with the instrument. The chords and melody just appeared. Now is not the time for interrogation or analysis. Now is the time to get to know the song, not change it before you even know it. It is like a wild animal, a living thing. Be careful not to scare it away.”

Trillian Stars

That last part holds true for cameras, as far as I’m concerned – they’re just different types of instruments through which we photographers channel our creativity. (Incidentally, I too play guitar.) Like Neil Young writing a song, I am seldom looking for something specific when I go shooting. I push my limits, but not too far at any given time. I suck at portrait photography, for instance, so I don’t even try to do that. I leave that to the masters, like my friend Kyle Cassidy. It’s much more enjoyable to admire his work than to try and figure out how to duplicate it. Just look at this portrait he made of his wife, Trillian Stars! Talk about making the most of all the snow we’ve had in Philadelphia – he blends costume, choreography, technical expertise, and a masterful imagination with the radiant beauty of his wife to create a stunning portrait of which I am in total awe. But that’s Kyle. I don’t believe he forces anything to come out. (Incidentally, Kyle, too plays guitar.)

"At the Abandoned Cross," by Ed Snyder

There’s actually a bit of a backstory to Kyle’s photograph, which makes it fit in even more closely with my theme of the seemingly serendipitous capture. When I asked if I could use his image in this blog, he relayed the following information. It ties in with my lemonade-from-lemons approach to creativity and like my tombstone shots in the snowy, abandoned cemetery. His photograph involves making snow work for you instead of letting it impede you. Conceivably this can apply to all sorts of adverse conditions.

On the day Kyle made the photograph, the heat in his house went out and it was freezing inside. He and his wife “went to the thrift store, partly because it was warm, and got that dress and then ran around outside taking photos because there was nothing much else to do, and whenever we'd race back inside from the 21 degree weather to the 36 degrees inside, it felt positively HOT in there. The heat was out for two or three days … our furnace died.”

Abandoned train

So the images you see on this page are serendipitous, quite like me stumbling upon my stolen guitar displayed for sale at Guitar Center in Cherry Hill, New Jersey last month. I had an Italian-made 70s-vintage 12-string acoustic for sale on consignment at a guitar shop in Delaware County back in 1985. The store was ransacked and all the instruments stolen. Nearly thirty years later, I walked into the acoustic room at the Guitar Center (always looking for that needle in the haystack, that amazing find!) and there it was, staring me in the face! I bought it, telling the store employee my story afterwards. I really wasn’t interested in how it got there, calling the police, or trying to prove that it was mine (which I couldn’t). It had telltale cracks in the finish and an odd little hole plug near the sound hole. Besides, my worn picks and guitar strap were still in the case! It looked as if no one had touched it in 29 years! A serendipitous find, I must say. What a lovely sound this thing makes – maybe as I mindlessly strum it, a few songs will come out. As with wild animals, I’ll be careful not to scare them away.

I leave you with something that Frank Zappa’s record producer Herb Cohen once said, “If you don’t know where you are going you can never get lost.”

References and Further Reading:
See Kyle Cassidy's work on  kylecassidy.com and/or @kylecassidy on Twitter
"Graves Beneath the Snow," Cemetery Traveler blog posting by Ed Snyder

Graves Beneath the Snow

The winter of 2013-2014 is one of the snowiest in Philadelphia history. I write this at the end of February, 2014 and we are finally seeing a break from the snow, ice, and cold (though more is expected later this week). Since I have relatively few photographs of cemeteries in the snow, I decided to make the most of the weather – the polar vortex, the clipper systems, the mini-ice age. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a great catalyst for the creation of new art, for looking beyond – pushing yourself to handle a new challenge!

On a weekend in mid-February, after a particularly grueling week of shoveling and navigating the near-death experience (as I’ve come to refer to my car, as it has bald tires), I needed a few hours relief. What better way to spend it than languorously strolling a cemetery in the snow, snapping a few photos here and there? Well, as my readers are well aware, I do nothing simply. (Also, I never snap just a few photos!) So I decided to drive out to the abandoned Jewish cemetery in the hilly woods of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania (a northwestern suburb of Philadelphia).

Headstones in the woods in Gladwyne, PA.'s abandoned Jewish cemetery

One thing I realized fairly quickly as I set out this winter to photograph cemeteries in their snowy glory: I do not own a 4-wheel-drive vehicle! Almost got stuck a few times with my car, so my access was usually by foot. Which has been relatively painful with the deep snow, wind and cold! I envy those who can just do a drive-through and shoot out the window! (You can read about some of my trials and tribulations in the Cemetery Traveler blog posting, “Have You Fallen in the Last Week?”)

Anyhow, Gladwyne was no exception. While the roads out to the Main Line (of Philadelphia) were clear of snow, potholes abounded! It was like dodging moon craters on City Avenue. When I finally made it through the twisting, turning roads of Conshohocken State Road into the area of the Har Ha Zetim Cemetery (see this past blog for specific directions as well as a history of the cemetery), I found the hilly private driveway covered in snow. One attempt, made it halfway. Second attempt, made it to the first house and lost momentum on the turn. Bald front tires on my turbo Saab did not help the effort. (“Winter” mode when selected on the traction console warns me that I have lost traction. Indeed, my front wheels are spinning and I’m not moving. I didn’t really need an illuminated dashboard indicator to tell me that.)

Cemetery lies to left of private tennis court off Conshohocken State Road

I backed up in the driveway, parked, and knocked on the door of the first house. Maybe I could park in their driveway, behind the tennis court? No answer. Noticed a car just like mine alongside their house, half covered in a snow bank, like some half-excavated mastodon in the ice. Got in my car and nosed back down the hill, but, as I said, it was snow and ice-covered. I rode the deep snow at the side of the road so as not to slide uncontrollably onto Conshohocken State Road.

Cemetery is up over the hill at left

I drove up the road looking for a place to park, but the plowed snow barricaded any of that. About a quarter mile away was the synagogue, Beth David, which has taken ownership of Har Ha Zetim. Maybe I could park there? No, too far away, and no sidewalks here! I figured I’d give it one more chance: shoot up the driveway to the cemetery and gun it around the bend and try to make it further up the hill. As I was doing this, I kind of figured the pull-off to the overgrown entrance to the cemetery would not be plowed, and I was right. I continued up the hill toward the two houses further up. This is a private drive, but there is an easement for access to the cemetery, which is a holdover from bygone days when there were horseback riding trails here.

I had no choice – I had to circle the last driveway and ask to park there – either that or give up. I knocked at the door of this palatial home that overlooked the wooded eighteen-acre ravine known in other times as Mount of Olives cemetery. A woman came to the glass storm door, but did not open it. I politely shouted my request, to which she nodded her head and walked away. Presumably, not to phone the police. I went to my car and made a production of getting my camera gear out (in case she was watching through a window), then proceeded to walk back down the icy, plowed driveway.

Cemetery entrance off access road

It was only about a five-minute walk to the graveyard entrance; a fallen tree blocked pedestrian entry. As I cut off the plowed drive into the woods, toward the entrance, I was surprised to find that the foot of snow had an icy crust that made every step quite laborious. I would step on the surface, lift my weight onto the surface … then the icy crust would give way and my foot would plunge down a foot into the powdery snow. Arghh. Did I really want to spend an hour doing this? Turns out I spent two. And was I ever exhausted!

With each laborious footfall, however, a new snowy scene presented itself. The shapes and shadows of the grim, abandoned graveyard in the woods greeted me in all directions. It was so difficult breaking through the snow that I probably spent more time than usual photographing each dramatic gravescape. I tried following the jackrabbit tracks so I wouldn’t crash through the snow with every step, but they trailed off into the denser woods. At one point I almost fell over backward as I lost my balance while composing this scene with the old brick crypt!

The lighting was perfect. The old iron plot fencing and gateposts were perfect. The only distraction I had was the thought of the long climb ahead of me, when I ventured back out of this place. Snow usually makes things look prettier, more pure. Not here. It just accentuates the desolation, the forgotten memories, the forgotten people. Rabbits had obviously been here, but I saw none. Saw no animals, in fact, the entire, deathly silent time I was there. But I captured some wonderful images, creating my own memory of this place, this time.

It is a graveyard lost to history, this Har Ha Zetim Cemetery. It is full of the simple art and architecture of its heyday, the late 1800s. Carved doves and flowers can be seen here and there, with names and Hebrew text still visible on many stones. There is even a U.S. military veteran's marker decorated with an American flag sunk in a small gully. This inactive "Gladwyne Jewish Cemetery," aka "Mount of Olives," was supposedly established in 1860, and served the poor Jewish population of Philadelphia and Norristown until the 1920s. It is a community of thousands of Jews, some of whom no doubt emigrated to America from Russia during the pogrom in 1881.Where are the descendants of these people ...?

After about twenty minutes of plodding down the hill into the ravine (where the headstones and cradle graves become more densely crowded), I realized that I was lugging about forty pounds of camera gear with me. If I didn’t have that weight, would I still break through the icy crust? I stripped myself of the camera bags and lo and behold, I could walk on the surface of the snow! It was strong enough to bear my two hundred pounds! Great. Now what? Leave my gear in the snow? That was a failed experiment. I picked up all my cameras and plunged further on down through the woods!

Acres and acres of graves fade into the distant forest

Gaiters would have been nice. Since the foot of snow below the crust was powdery, my socks filled with snow as my pant legs were pulled up by the ice layer with each heavy step. Sigh. Maybe this is why they call it artWORK– because it sometimes takes a lot of WORK to create it! At least it wasn’t cold, about thirty-eight degrees. However, this was way more work than I expected. But it paid off. This trip was worth the effort on so many levels.

In the back of my mind, I had thought maybe if I walked in my own footsteps back up the hill, it would be less work. The reality, though, is that the foot pattern is just the opposite of what I needed for this to work! The only way to reuse the snow holes made by my feet on the way in would be to walk backwards on the way out! Sigh.Well, at least the long, slow plod allowed me to concentrate on my surroundings from the opposite direction. This is a technique of mine that is so basic and effective, it fascinates me. Just walk toward the same thing from different directions and you’ll see things differently!

One of the best images I made here today was done in this manner. The scene with the grave marker that says “At Rest” was invisible to me on the way down the hill. When I came upon this setting, about halfway out of the ravine, I was startled by the shadows made on the snow by the dead leaves still clinging to the branches of a small tree. I automatically went into my black and white mode of thinking, where you “see” in black and white. The ripples of leaf shadows and the snowdrifts gave the impression of headstones afloat on seawaves of snow.

You know how you might spend a period of time on a shoot and then - Eureka! you instantly realize that that was the shot you were after!? Your hard work just paid off with the success of that single image! I regained control from my imagination and set to climbing out of Har Ha Zetim with that thought. I left the memory of the hard work and exhaustion buried back there in snow.

Further Reading:
Read more about Gladwyne's abandoned Jewish cemetery in the Cemetery Traveler blog posting:  Passover and Gladwyne's Abandoned Jewish Cemetery

Elysian Fields – The Second Coming

As you may recall from our last episode, I spent some time photographing an abandoned cemetery and had a bit of a challenge getting out afterwards. So when the opportunity arose to return to the same site two days later, I licked my wounds, cuts, scrapes, and bruises and jumped at the opportunity. You know what they say about lost opportunity: “a squandered gift, a wasted day, time chases life away” (at least the band Slaid Cleaves says so in their song, “Sinner’s Prayer”).

How did this come about? Well, some friends of mine expressed interest in photographing this same site, folks who like me, appreciate the beauty in entropy. It was such an amazing place, that I could not resist a second visit. I was to meet them nearby and we would all climb the fence into the graveyard. We met at the appointed hour; however, I misjudged the expected activity at the site next door. This had been staid on my last visit; now, it was now teeming with activity. Backhoes digging, pickup trucks zooming around. So we found a climbable section of the fence, out of view of the construction people. My companions, who were much younger and more limber than I, had no difficulty getting up the fence and down the vine-covered tree on the other side. I had some difficulty, the final portion of my trip culminating with a slide down yonder which scraped a few inches of skin on my forearm. But hey, no guts, no glory. 

Off we trudged into the old, gnarly graveyard. Sky was clear, weather was cold. This particular area was easy to walk through, but just ahead we could see hillocks of invasive mile-a-minute weeds engulfing monuments, headstones, and everything else in its path. Looked like a lunar landscape of dead farmland, or something. The cemetery is preserved, but not in a way that it was intended. Trees, growing at odd angles, their crooked branches strangled by vines, are so huge that they dwarf and enshroud thirty-foot tall obelisks. You wonder if old cemetery trees look as they do partly because of the arsenic and other nasty embalming chemicals in the soil.

While my prior visit to Elysian Fields (not its real name, as you may have guessed) offered a splendid opportunity for independent study, this visit would be otherwise. Shooting with others forces you to see things differently, sometimes to see things their way. It’s also safer if you’re not by yourself – who knows what you’d come upon in such a place - thieves stealing bronze doors off mausoleums, animals, or worse. I pointed out some familiar locations to my fellow photographers. At least one member of the party had never been in here, and it’s interesting to see that look of wide-eyed wonder on someone when you know they appreciate the initial experience as much as you did. Kind of like when a friend took me to the movies when Jaws was first released. He had seen the film a couple days before and knew when all the scary parts would happen. Instead of watching the movie at those times, he watched me to see my reaction!

I can describe this old graveyard to the best of my ability, but it really is not something that can be adequately expropriated by word or even image (though I am satisfied with the images I made). On a smaller scale, it would be akin to me describing or photographing the Grand Canyon and expecting you to appreciate it as if you were there. 

This was the type of day that achieves meteorological perfection, photography-wise. During my visit two days before, I must admit I was rather in a fugue state: kind of an altered state of consciousness in which you move about purposely but are not fully aware. Almost like the Stendhal Syndrome. The place has that kind of effect on you. Even with four of us moving around making photographs, reading epitaphs, little was spoken. There was little interaction as each individual took in the scene though his own filter.

Did it seem anti-climactic for me to be here a second time just days after my last visit? I might say that I wasn’t filled to the brim with a sense of purpose, though such photographic plentitude allowed me to concentrate on more detail than before. I made better and closer photographs of the monuments, I went inside the mausoleums whose doors were ajar. True, I was familiar with the terrain and locations of certain monuments, but repeatedly walking through a cemetery does not repeat the experience. You can never step into the same river twice. The weather changes, the lighting changes – even if you are there at the same time of day as I was two days before!

Though it was a sunny day, it was again cold – in the forties. Tomorrow it would rain, the next day it would turn sharply colder and snow. The angels and mourning women care not, as they commune in the shadows of giant obelisks and monuments. The famous and not so famous comingle throughout this vast sculpture garden, the tangles of foliage giving evidence of Nature trying to reclaim her territory.

As we enter beckoning mausoleums with their missing stained glass windows, it is evident that theft occurs. No one legitimately comes in here, save the very occasional descendant. I notice a couple of fresh Christmas wreaths lying at the base of two headstones, their dried-up predecessors lying outside the plot area. Weird. Aside from this, everything looks as if in suspended animation, but from what year? 1970? 1940? 1910? Difficult to say. In its present state, this place has an immense amount of character, and is one of the most photographically interesting abandoned sites in the history of history.

Typically cemeteries offer distinct boundaries between the sacred and the profane, but this place is quite the opposite. There is memory preservation here, and that’s good. But perpetual care? Not so much. The child buried beneath the statue (in the photo below) will always be a child. John Barrymore’s legend will live through the ages, but who visits and honors his grave? A cemetery is a way of preserving things. Not necessarily the past, more like the present. This forsaken old Victorian graveyard is not just who we were, it is also who we are. However, I’ve learned to keep an open mind about such abandoned sites as this – just because it is not kept up does not mean people don’t care about it. 

All the while I was at Elysian Fields I was getting texts and cell phone calls. Rather annoying and couldn’t concentrate. So I decided to leave before the others were done. I had an ulterior motive, I must confess: I was not keen on having witnesses to my expected ungraceful exit over the fence! So I made my way through the weeds, back behind the beyond where I expected to find safe passage home. 

Unfortunately, the backhoes were now digging right there! Second best, I would attempt to climb the tree where we had come in, and hop the fence at that point. I managed to get to the top of the barbed-wire fence by pulling myself up the tree like freaking George of the Jungle when – a pickup truck zoomed into view! I did not want anyone to see me, though I wasn’t at all sure they would even care, so I loosened my gloved grip and the vines gave way! The only thing that broke my six-foot fall were all the dry-rotted tree branches lying on the ground. They say our physical senses reflect our current belief system. If that is indeed the case, I believe I just fell out of a tree. But they also say that the responsibility for our pain is our own.

After checking to make sure nothing else was broken, I got pissed off and grabbed the nearest vine and pulled myself up to the top off the fence, damn the pickup trucks. I got to the top, saw no one in site and made a break for it. I dropped down the opposite side, grabbed my photography gear, and walked nonchalantly across the grounds to my car. As nonchalantly as I could with torn pants and sticks and leaves sticking out of my hair.

Creating abandoned site photographs is exhilarating. The danger is evident in every picture. This is probably why I enjoy similar work by others – I know how difficult it is to gain access to these places. I appreciate others’ work, when it is something that I myself may be too scared to attempt.

Please click here to read part one of this story:
A New Year - A New Abandoned Cemetery