Headstones – My Favorite Non-paved Surfaces

The weather mavens said on the radio the other day that snow was being forecast for the following morning, with a one to two-inch accumulation expected on non-paved surfaces. It continues to baffle me how the snow itself can actually discern a paved surface (roadway, parking lot, etc.) from a non-paved surface, and adjust its accumulation characteristics accordingly. One of MY favorite non-paved surfaces, by the way, happens to be grave markers.

Conditions were perfect on the morning in question – lightly snowing, about half an inch of heavy, wet snow covering my car, 39 degrees, no wind. With any luck, the monuments and tombstones at Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery were also lightly covered, and would stay that way for a while. Being two weeks before Easter, this was probably the last snow of winter. I wanted to take advantage of it and make some photographs to post on my ”Cemeteries in the Snow” Facebook group page.

My friend Frank, who works at Laurel Hill, called me saying “It’s a winter wonderland up here!” This confirmed my suspicions that I was making a worthwhile run. The cemetery is about eight miles from where I live, and takes about forty minutes to drive there.

I arrived at the cemetery about 9:30 a.m., and shot for about two hours. The paved surfaces – the roadways – were clear of snow, which is key to me getting good photographs. My Saab convertible is about as effective in snow as a hoverboard. Someday I’ll get an SUV so I can plow through the snow and get all those great photos I’ve been missing.

What kind of photographs can you get in graveyards in the snow that you can't get when there is no snow? For one thing, snow allows you to create temporary graffiti on headstones (do clean them off after you are done so as not to irk other visitors).

Snow also adds contrast to the degree that it forces your eye in directions it may not have taken without the snow. For example, as many times as I’ve been to Laurel Hill Cemetery, I had never noticed this moth carving. I’ve only ever seen the moth on rare occasions on cemetery statuary. Consider this interesting passage from the Recoleta Cemetery (Buenos Aires) website:

"Moths are perfect symbols for cemeteries… Just think about it. As a caterpillar wraps itself in a cocoon, it appears to be dead. But after metamorphosis takes place, it is reborn as a winged creature that is attracted to light. The life cycle of a moth is therefore a wonderful allegory for a loved one who passes away, is transformed & later reborn… heading to the light."

"Heading to the light" - I like that description.You typically only see moths at twilight, flitting around a light of some sort. Death - in Western cultures - is typically seen as a nighttime thing, after which we eventually hope to see the heavenly light. Below is another depiction of spiritual release - the soul of the departed with wings, leaving the coffin and floating heavenward.

My buddy Frank, who had been busy working all morning, phoned me in the early afternoon to see if I had been there. When I told him I had been there and gone, he said, “You’re lucky you came early, there’s nothing left on any of the statues!” It had warmed up and most of the snow had melted away. Not all my photographic endeavors have been this successful!

Temporary graffiti, and a comment on mortality

Zinc monument, Laurel Hill Cemetery

Photographically, I made images that day with an assortment of cameras. For this blog post, I purposely used only those I made with my Apple iPhone 6. I get slightly different perspectives with the camera phone (phone camera?). The image at right came out rather well - a very unusual zinc (or "white bronze" - see my previous blog post about this) grave marker. This is about eight feet high and is inscribed on all four sides with information about the husband and wife who are buried beneath it. The snow makes the metal stand out more than it would against a grassy background.  

I posted several of the iPhone photographs I made during my visit on Instagram, having just opened one of these photo-based social media accounts. (Find me, Ed Snyder, as "mourningarts" on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mourningarts/)

As a photographer, it’s good to have destination sites in mind for when the weather decides to cooperate with your artistic tendencies. It's also good to be familiar with the site. It gives you the opportunity to use clever captions like this one for your photos:

March certainly came in like a lion this year!

If I had a handy cemetery lamb photo I would post that here. However, I don't, so that’s probably a wrap for my snowy cemetery excursions this year. Here in Philadelphia, we probably won't get any more snow on my favorite non-paved surfaces until next winter. Time to adjust my photographic endeavors accordingly. Next up - spring! Make hay while the sun shines, as they say!

Nisky Hill Cemetery, Bethlehem, PA

On a bitterly cold and windy day in January, I met up with some friends to tour and make photographs in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania’s Nisky Hill Cemetery. Great art comes from great pain. Fifteen degrees with a wind chill right off the Lehigh River that can numb gloved fingers in fifteen minutes. Some snow and ice remained on the ground from a prior time, much as the monstrous and rusting hulks of the Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces sat dormant across the river. These “steel stacks” can easily be seen through the leafless trees at the edge of the cemetery. Looking toward them makes you assume that many of the graves here must have belonged to steel workers.

 

Dormant blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel lurk across the Lehigh River

Or not. This was more likely an elite cemetery, with the actual immigrant steel workers buried in rude churchyard cemeteries like St. Michael's on the south (opposite) side of the river. Nisky Hill Cemetery appears to be in an affluent neighborhood of Bethlehem (check out this Christmas house across the street).

From what little I’ve been able to ascertain, Nisky Hill Cemetery was founded in 1864 as a Moravian burial ground. The original “Union Cemetery” (having nothing to do with the Grand Army of the Republic) at the eastern end of this large rectangular property, appears to have been annexed to Nisky Hill at some point in time.  The old gates along the front of the cemetery (East Church Street) offer the words “UNION CEMETERY” spelled out on them in wrought iron. I will assume Bethlehem Union Cemetery predates Nisky Hill.

Office at main entrance, Nisky Hill Cemetery

 The main entrance here is a bit odd. The entire cemetery is essentially build into the river bank, and slopes down toward it. Nisky Hill Cemetery is owned by the Bethlehem Area Moravians, Inc., a privately-held corporation which, it seems, has been in the local cemetery business since 1823 (ref.). Why, I’m not sure. I could fill a book with what I don’t know about the Moravians, so I’ll save that research for another time. Suffice it to say that “Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was founded in 1741 by a group of Moravians, members of a church that traces its heritage to pre-Reformation fifteenth-century central Europe”(ref.).

Interesting example of a "pre-need" cemetery monument

While it was a bit uncomfortable being out in the elements on this bright chilly winter’s day, it was actually kind of a cake walk. After some recent visits to abandoned cemeteries where I had to climb over fences and fall out of trees, this visit to Nisky Hill was so easy it seemed like I was getting away with something! While there was snow on the ground, the roads were plowed – in fact, the gates were wide open and we drove right in! Sometimes you take such conveniences for granted. There are in fact many cemeteries I’ve visited in winter where they don’t even plow the snow off the roads or even unlock the gate! Nisky Hill Cemetery is well-maintained and safe. I would guess that the caretaker lives on site in the old office building (there was a swing set behind it).

As we made our way methodically from one mausoleum to the next, I kept thinking about the heating packets for my gloves that I left in the trunk of my car. Oh well, cold fingers are better than the bloody ones ripped up by barbed wire a few weeks ago as a result of my last cemetery exploration! Today, we had a warm running vehicle to which we could adjourn about every fifteen minutes. Pampered.

Zinc ("White Bronze") memorial

As photographers, my friends and I ran off in our separate directions, pursuing our personal visions. Sometimes these interact, sometimes they are at odds with each other. While it can be interesting to see how different people photograph the same scene (like we did with the Civil War cannon above), I rather enjoy totally missing some awesome detail that a friend points out! In the case at Nisky Hill, I would have totally missed a few things, wrapped up in my own world of zinc monuments and snow. My friend Jonathan pointed out the disembodied heads (photos above) and the color photographic mausoleum glass window shown below.

The what? A photographic image about two by three feet, in color, of children in a boat, playing near a small waterfall. Trees crowd the sunny sky, while a hole from a bullet or stone mars the idyllic scene. What exactly is this? It is not stained glass nor painted glass, done in the usual fashion. A photograph printed on glass, then hand-painted? A type of 1860s lantern slide or an early 1900s autochrome? This is a positive image, like a color slide transparency. I am totally curious about this, so if anyone can offer a clue as to how this was done, please comment!

Author at William H. Thomas monument

Perhaps the most unusual monument in the entire cemetery was the one at the main entrance. Before we met up at Nisky Hill, my friends texted me about their impending arrival. This was about fifteen minutes after I arrived. I texted them back, “Meet you at the giant phallus.” I took a selfie before they got there, to help gauge the size - I am six foot two inches tall. Imagine. What would possess someone to install such a thing on one’s grave is beyond me, but apparently William H. Thomas was possessed by exactly that prior to his death in 1928. Maybe he wanted his monument to be higher than the steel stacks across the river? This sixteen-foot high tan (I swear) granite testament to the male ego stands out like a witty analogy amidst the much smaller, normal-sized grave markers that surround it. 

According to Funeralwise.com, “Moravians focus on the simplicity of burial grounds. They believe in uniform, plain grave markers and inscriptions to emphasize the equality of all human beings.” Oddly, the phallus is right next to the office building so no one can ever miss it. "Equality" aside, whoever all there people were, the residents of Nisky Hill and Union Cemetery in Bethlehem, their choice of how to be remembered was personal. These markers and monuments represent their lives, their community, their collective soul. It is a varied collection.

 

Older Moravian grave markers

Although Nisky Hill was originally restricted to Moravian burials, at some point this changed. Older Moravian cemeteries have smallish, low to the ground grave markers, almost like a memorial park or a Quaker burial ground with no high tombstones or monuments. There are a number of Moravian stones in this cemetery, made of white marble – perhaps twenty inches long, fourteen inches wide, and four inches high. However, Nisky Hill/Union Cemetery evolved for the most part into a classic American Victorian-era cemetery, replete with angels, zinc monuments, mausolea, and other decorative details from that era of mourning art.