Sigma San Jose del El Rosario Cemetery - Albuquerque

Lawrence A.

Hall of Famer
Location
New Mexico
Name
Larry
These were shot with my DP2S, though I hope to be able to continue the project with a Merrill at some point. The shots make no pretense to being "art", but are rather straight forward documents of a disintegrating reality.

The cemetery, once located on the outskirts of the city, now sits beside an on-ramp to I-25 -- lonely, vandalized, and apparently neglected except for the touching signs of remembrance still there in the form of fading plastic flowers, toppled artificial Christmas trees of recent vintage, and other evidence of recent attention. The older concrete on rebar memorials are falling apart, and the wooden crosses are in their turn inevitably disintegrating into eternity. The whole affect, for me at least, is of brave, even heroic, confrontation with inevitability. "Time will say nothing but I told you so.." says the poet, Auden, and in the end, memory, concrete, wood, everything in fact, will be overcome by it.

When I was in graduate school, before becoming ill and having to leave, I was studying Anglo-Saxon literature, and the same heroic stance in the face of the inevitable infuses the ethos of that poetry. It is not arrogance, as some imagine, but rather the stoic knowledge that one must go on in the face of things as they are, even, perhaps, as they are fated to be. And one must remember. I find it extraordinarily moving.

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I like these very much, the weathering and the way they still stand.... just about! Perhaps we should have a cemetery thread. I went to a local one yesterday and was moved by the way some graves are still obviously lovingly tended even some 50 years down the line, particularly the graves of children.
 
I have always been fascinated by cemeteries, mausoleums, and such. They stand silently through time as a record of people who once lived, loved, struggled, created and have since been forever stilled. And, as you mention, time will ultimately transform all of it, including the concrete and steel.

Your images are great and I appreciate your thoughts and commentary even more.
 
There are cemeteries here that are more park like, with "perpetual care" built into the purchase price of the plot, and lawns watered by an increasingly depleted aquifer. San Jose is older, and many of the dates go back to the early part of the last century. In New England, where I come from, the very old graves, from the 18th century and before, are slate, fragile but more enduring than concrete, and more recent ones are mostly marked by monuments of polished and very durable granite, which weather well, mined from the abundant local quarries. The concrete and rebar and wooden markers of San Jose are scorched by the high desert sun, frozen and thawed all winter in a cycle of mild days and bitter cold nights, and even though only from the first half of the 20th century, the materials and the climate haven't led to enduring remembrances. It makes the occasional plastic flower or other sign of remembrance all the more touching.

Here's a shot I neglected to include before. The little tacks or nails were supposed to spell something out, but I cannot decipher it in the state it is in. Still (and maybe it is my background in heroic poetry in my own distant past), I think there is something valiant about it all.

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The project continues, a little at a time. These two shots are with the E-M5. I'm really not that morbid; I just find the place fascinating and moving. The Buddha said that life is suffering; San Jose cemetery is a testament to that and to our ability to keep on -- with our small remembrances, futile in the face of time, perhaps, but not futile at all before the face of love.

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