Not to be confused with an “All Ages Show,”  this exhibit is a ten-year retrospective of Ed Snyder’s Cemetery Statuary Photography.

Exhibit runs the entire month of December, 2009 (daily, 7 a.m. – 9 p.m.)

Philadelphia Java Company, 518 South Fourth Street (near South St.), Philadelphia, PA   (215) 928-1811

Matted framed images for sale by contacting artist: mourningarts@yahoo.com

Opening Reception Friday, Feb. 15, 6 – 8 pm.
http://saintasaphs.org/Current_Exhibit.html

Ed Snyder is having a show of his photography at St. Asaph Gallery, Feb. 17 – Mar. 16 2008. Twenty images spanning his 10-year study of cemetery statuary will be on display. The exhibit merges art and photography with society’s desire to come to terms with death and dying. Oh, and there will be wine and snacks to lighten things up a bit.

St. Asaph church, attached to the gallery, is sort of a miniature gothic cathedral, complete with gargoyles and Tiffany stained glass windows! It’s located one block off City Avenue, near Belmont Avenue in Philadelphia. Please see their website for directions: http://saintasaphs.org/Contacts.html

Intro

A friend loaned me “Safelight” because it’s about photography and death—two of my hobbies. She said it made her depressed. And it is a depressing book, in the same way “Tuesdays With Morrie” (Mitch Albom) is a depressing book. Drawing from his experience as a paramedic in Harlem, the author takes us on a gritty ride through the squalid backstreets of NYC circa 1990. Through his main character Frank, a paramedic, Mr. Burke relates life through ambulance calls with gruesome clarity and realism. Frank’s job is the vehicle for the story.

What is Safelight about?

The word safelight refers literally to the reddish light used in photographic darkrooms. Metaphorically it has other meanings in the book. Written in the first person, Safelight is a riveting account of a two-year portion of the main character’s life. Frank, the paramedic, is also an amateur photographer who likes to photograph dead, injured, and decrepit people. It appears to be a sick habit his coworkers tolerate, maybe even admire. We never really find out why he does it (to which I can relate, as a photographer), only that it helps him cope in some real way with his life and the death of his father. Frank enters a relationship with a terminally ill woman, a professional fencer. Life happens quickly in this relatively short book.

What is Safelight about?

The characters in Safelight are tough, as one would envision New Yorkers to be. Tough ‘til the end. Though none of them are developed to any great extent, we learn who they are and how they are wired effectively enough to hold the story together. They are thoroughly believable from my perspective: I’m a photographer, I live in a big city, I work at a hospital, and I have a (possibly) less-than-wholesome interest in death.

Harlem, 1990

Set in the tenement neighborhoods of New York City in 1990, the book is part love story, part self-discovery. Frank gets into various forms of trouble, or rather, puts him into situations that seem unwise from an objective point of view. But really, we sometimes do things that are inexplicable, not only to the watching world, but to our own selves. Some of the things the characters do also seem inexplicable; though we know they can and do happen.

Reading this book is another one of those inexplicable things. It’s almost like you know there will be a bad outcome, but you keep reading, expecting some life-affirming philosophy at the end. In this regard, the book does not disappoint. I found it difficult to put down, perhaps because it appealed to me on so many levels. Paramedics would find the story technically accurate. Photographers will relate to Frank, especially if they’ve labored to find direction, reason, and an outlet for their work. No different, really, than the average person looking for and possibly finding direction. After reading Safelight, we’re tempted to look back on our own lives and consider that specific experiences may not have been mere distractions in our path, but rather guideposts. Could such an epiphany change the way we view future events?

The Writing Style

Safelight is Burke’s first novel. The writing is almost in journal, or diary form. Maybe what you’d expect in a paramedic’s notebook. It’s concise, almost terse writing style is engaging in that you know this chapter will not contain fluff. You expect the other shoe to drop at any time.

Summarizing Safelight

It seems to me the goal of the book is to make us think about why we do what we do. We see from chronologic narratives how lives are shaped by discreet events–birth, childhood, friendships, marriage, divorce, death. But we also see that only the first event, birth, is beyond our control. Whatever else happens to us is usually of our choosing. Things don’t happen to us so much as we choose our directions.

A book like this can make you feel a lot of things—like you are afraid to die, like you should appreciate the beauty in the world, like starting a new romance, be accepting of death. In the liner notes, Safelight is described as a “love story not for the faint of heart.” Sounds trite, but for me it meant that a love story doesn’t necessarily mean the couple will live happily ever after. Its optimism stems from the fact that life really only has one end. When we find ourselves at an impasse, stalled, or traumatized, we can think of how Helen Keller said that when one door closes, another opens.

You can now buy products with Celestial Angel (to the left) and Cemetery (featured in Death Depicted in Cemetery Symbolism – Part 2).Mugshots CoffeeHouse & Cafe
110 Cotton Street. Philadelphia, PA 19127
Just off Main Street in Manayunk
Phone: 215.482.3964
Check their website for hours and directions

Also, I’ll have two pieces in a show at Laurel Hill Cemetery from Sept. 9 – 30 including the piece to the left. In conjunction with Laurel Hill’s Spoon River reenactment (see below), the cemetery will host an exhibit of “Cemetery and Death-Related Art” in its gatehouse gallery. I’ve seen some of this – wow, and I thought I was odd…! You can also see other cemetery artifacts there. Laurel Hill is really an amazing place.

Check out Laurel Hill’s new website for hours and directions.

Fringe Festival Performance – The Late Laureates of Laurel Hill (Cemetery)

Spoon River is a book of fictitious epitaphs written by Edgar Lee Masters in 1915. Written as if the dead citizens of a Midwestern town are speaking from the grave, it has been adapted for theatre in the past–occasionally with a musical score added. As part of the 2006 Philly Fringe Live Arts Festival, a twilight reading of Spoon River will take place in Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. See the Fringe Festival website for details.

Mourning Dove

Indigenous to North and Central America, this member of the pigeon family is known for its mournfully plaintive call, “cooOOoo-coo-coo-coo” and the whistling of its wings as it takes flight. It’s interesting that this term came up in our keyword searches for cemetery-related items–I always thought it was morning dove!

In Christianity, the dove represents the Holy Spirit, but is has had many different cultural meanings throughout history. For instance in Jewish history, a dove was sometimes sacrificed for a mother’s purification after childbirth. In Slavic culture, the soul turns into a dove at the moment of death. In the John Prine song, Jesus, The Missing Years, Jesus takes out his guitar and writes a song called “The Dove of Love Fell off the Perch.”

Roadside Memorials

The mourning rituals practiced by today’s fast-moving society are quite novel. Though one rarely feels uplifted by the sad bouquet of soggy stuffed animals tied to the telephone pole, we should respect the fact that people are finding their own ways to deal with loss. Spontaneous memorials like this roadside cross seldom stir up images of a life well spent and a just reward. Rather, they indicate sudden, unexpected, and usually violent death. These are abrupt memorials marking an abrupt loss of life.

People take comfort in ritual. These spontaneous memorials honor the memory of the deceased and provide us with ritual closure. Their purpose is no different from a heavily orchestrated church memorial service, though they are much more informal and personal. While spontaneous memorials may be outside the bounds of social decorum, they are free and low-key )sort of like burying your relative’s ashes on the sly, next to the family grave marker).

Further Reading: A Lively Look at the History of Death

Urn -Vessel of the Soul

I would hazard to guess that urns were the most common sculptural symbol in Victorian-era cemeteries. A Greek symbol of mourning, the urn represents the body as a container of the soul. In ancient Greece, the urn was a repository for the ashes of the dead, so it has quite a literal and functional meaning in a cemetery.

Often the urn is draped with a pall (seen in background), a cloth sometimes used to drape a closed casket. A coffin or casket can also be called a pall, by the way (hence pallbearers). The practice of draping is not isolated to urns, as you can see from this image.

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep – Further Exploration into the Symbolism of Death

The heading of this final section is the title of Mary Elizabeth Frye’s famous bereavement poem, reprinted below. As lives are concluded, we mourn the loss. Everywhere we look, we are reminded of the deceased, until time heals the wound. We feel it’s unfair to forget them, but we must get on with our lives. Quite possibly, the grave marker serves this purpose for many people. Subconsciously, at least, we officially mark their place on this earth so no one thinks us callous, and then we get on with our lives. Monuments and symbols become coping mechanisms, cemeteries become landscapes of memories. The world becomes a continual reminder of what once was.

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep – by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow, I am the sun on ripened grain, I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you wake in the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there; I did not die.

The verse has abundant symbolism, all related to the tension between letting go and holding on. While some cemetery symbols we’ve seen in this article can depict both the end as well as a beginning (e.g., the hourglass with wings), we’ve seen others that simply lament the fact that we are mortal. As we wrestle with our own interpretations of symbols, death, and the afterlife, it is best to consider what (the 17th Century English author) John Milton said:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.”

To read more about the psychology of mourning, you may want to read: Remembering Well: Rituals for Celebrating Life and Mourning Death (Hardcover)

by Sarah York

If you ever feel the need to feast on the lion’s share of funerary symbolism, visit Arlington Cemetery’s Mourning Arts Museum in Drexel Hill, PA (outside Philadelphia).

Wolf Tables – More than Markers of Burial Plots

While not so much a symbol as a practical device, wolf stones and wolf tables do remind us of the mortality of the flesh. These devices were used where thin soil and/or rocky terrain prevented the digging of deep graves. Here’s a photo of me sitting on a wolf table at a cemetery in Camden, NJ.

(Before this cemetery received an overhaul, it had a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood at the entrance, on which was painted the message: “No unauthorized burials permitted.”)

Stone slabs over graves offered some protection from scavenging wolves. Ben Franklin’s grave in Christ Church burial ground in Philadelphia is an example of a wolf stone. While it may seem a quaint practice to toss a penny onto his grave (“A penny saved is a penny earned”), the Christ Church Preservation Trust actually rakes up about $1800 a year, which helps defray the cost of site maintenance!

Cemetery Gate (Through which Souls Pass)

Another guardian of the grave is the cemetery gate. As you can see from the photo, cemetery gates can be just plain creepy, whether they be an entrance to a fenced family plot or a main gate. A gate or a barred entrance can symbolize the gates of Heaven; the entrance of the departed into the afterlife. This gate is that of the Baltimore National Cemetery.

In the late 1800s, people were just dying to get into Historic Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. One of the entrance gates had to be equipped with a turnstile in order to control the flow of horse-drawn carriage visitors into the cemetery!

In the Victorian era (roughly 1837 to 1901), the cemetery was the place to spend a quiet afternoon, as there were no arboretums, parks or museums to provide bucolic getaways from the noisy cities. That is, until the time came that the huge number of visitors and tourists forced Laurel Hill to begin issuing gate passes to lot holders and restricting Sunday visits to family members! (Read more about Laurel Hill Cemetery.)

Read more: The Very Quiet Baltimoreans: A Guide to the Historic Cemeteries and Burial Sites of Baltimore

Women and the Art of Mourning

As men are not allowed to be wholly emotional beings in Western society, women appear to be the designated grievers. This is why there are so many more melancholy women than men depicted in symbolic cemetery memorials. Apart from the odd centurion or archangel, men are typically characterized as their successful earthly selves.

For more on this topic, please see the book Saving Graces: Images of Women European Cemeteries by David Robinson.

Babies, Children, and Cherubs

Another of the famous rural Victorian garden cemeteries (actually the first of its kind in the U.S.) is Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mount Auburn Cherub was photographed here. Babies, Children, and Cherubs typically represent the untimely death of a child. As such, the symbol can invoke only sadness and death.

Walking through old American cemeteries, it is not unusual to see many hundred-year-old tombstones of children who died before they were two years old-sometimes from the same family as we see in the photo to the left.

We don’t see this as much today since childhood mortality is much lower than it was in the 1800s–mainly due to better living conditions, prenatal care, and vaccinations. Mount Auburn Cemetery (est. 1831), just outside Boston on the Harvard campus, is the nation’s first landscaped or “garden” cemetery. The inception of these outdoor sculpture gardens became a catalyst as well as repository for symbolism new and old.

Read more about Mount Auburn Cemetery: Portsmouth Cemeteries (Images of America) by Glenn A. Knoblock

This is not surprising, as Western society appears to be much more fascinated with death than with the afterlife (a quick scan of popular music and literature should make this plainly evident). In one place we are presented with historical, religious, architectural, genealogical, demographical, and sociological manifestations of society’s desire to memorialize the dead.

We’re all familiar with such symbols as the Star of David, and variations of the cross, but what about broken trees and wolf tables, i.e., symbols of death rather than the afterlife? In this article we’ll have a look at some common and some not-so-common symbols, all associated with letting go. So let’s first look at Mortality, that’s the big one.

Father Time

Much like the Grim Reaper, Father Time is often depicted with a sickle or scythe. Will this mythical personification of time use the instrument to cut us down in our prime? No. Father Time had his origin as Saturn, the Roman Deity of Time and an ancient Italian Corn God known as the Sower (the Greeks referred to him as Cronus or Kronos). Male ruler of the Roman Gods before Jupiter, Saturn’s weapon was a scythe. The Roman holiday of Saturnalia was a celebration of the harvest, hence the scythe. It was not until the Middle Ages that the Grim Reaper depictions familiar to us came into being.Father Time’s old, bent body reminds us that time is the devourer of all things and that, like the sand in the hourglass, his physical vitality will eventually run out -as will ours.In the image “Father Time,” atop a Masonic monument in Queens, NY, the sculptor seems to have taken liberties with symbolism. Angel wings? Your guess is as good as mine. Letting the imagination soar is not an uncommon thing in funerary sculpture. It is the one place where sculptors and architects are not required to follow any one particular style.

Hourglass

As long as we’re on the subject of time, let’s look at one of its symbols–the hourglass. In addition to actually being used as a timekeeping device, the hourglass in the mourning arts conjures the notion of time’s passing and the inevitability of death. Again, time flies, as seen on this cemetery gate emblem (Woodlands Cemetery, Philadelphia). One of the most amazing funerary sculptures I’ve ever seen is on the rear gatehouse of Baltimore’s Louden Park Cemetery-a huge hundred-plus-year-old wooden carving depicting the hourglass with wings. An hourglass indicates the person’s time on earth ran out and suggests that we should embrace life because it, much like the flow of the sand in an hourglass, is finite and will eventually end. Other funerary symbols that essentially say the same thing are the cut tree and the broken pillar.

Human Bones

Another example of the hourglass is depicted above crossed bones, on this stone in an old Quaker churchyard cemetery in Philadelphia. Both symbols are of rudimentary design and therefore were easy to carve. Crossed bones remind us that our earthly bodies will someday die.

According to Wikipedia, actual skulls and bones were long used to mark the entrances to Spanish cemeteries. The practice, dating back to the 1700s, led to the symbol eventually becoming associated with the concept of death. It is interesting to note how the skull and crossbones (depicted on headstones in the 1700s) evolved into the cherub head with wings by the mid-1800s. The change is coincident with society’s changing (i.e., less terrifying) attitudes toward death.

Weeping Willow Tree

Most plants and trees in cemetery ornamentation symbolize the positive, goodness, the afterlife. My father used to refer to death as “pushing up daisies,” a happy notion. The willow, however, is one of the few plants that is plainly indicative of sorrow and mourning. “Nature’s lament,” is how the weeping willow is referred to in Rochester’s Glossary of Victorian Cemetery Symbolism, but why this association with death? Well, cemetery trees in general have a mystique about them. Edgar Lee Masters, in his “Spoon River Anthology” writes how people “…move into the soil and into the flesh of the tree, and into the living epitaphs…” As for the willow itself, Greek mythology has it that the sorceress Circe had a cemetery planted with willow trees dedicated to Hecate (perceived for the most part as the goddess of witchcraft or evil) and her magic. Here men’s corpses were left exposed in the tops of the trees for the birds and elements to devour. From this association with grief and death came the practice of placing willow branches inside coffins, and the planting of young saplings on graves of the departed.

According to the Wiccans, the ancient Celts believed that the spirit of the dead would rise up into the sapling planted above, which would grow and retain the essence of the departed person.

Truth be told, you don’t generally see the willow carved onto tombstones after the 1850s. Prior to that it appeared to be a fairly common symbol. This tattoo belongs to a member of the AGS, Association for Gravestone Studies.

Further reading: The Complete World of Greek Mythology by Richard Buxton

I’d never have known of the existence of this little treasure if not for Ross Mitchell, Executive Director of Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. During an interview with Ross, he mentioned that portions of the book will be re-enacted on the cemetery grounds during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival on September 9, 2006.

About Edgar Lee Masters

The author of this poetic odyssey, Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950), was an enormously prolific American writer and poet. He is known mainly for Spoon River, his most popular work. Ezra Pound said “at last, America has discovered a poet” in reference to Masters. He author was dubbed “the natural child of Walt Whitman” by one critic, as his poetic style is similar to Whitman’s. (Whitman, by the way, is buried across the river from Philadelphia, at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, NJ).

Structure of Spoon River

The book is essentially a collection of poems written by Masters, epigrams which detail the lives of the many residents of a fictitious midwestern town in the late 1800s. Though more about the human condition, the book is written with the town as a backdrop to 245 single-page monologues by the deceased – as if they wrote their own epitaphs. The poetry is free verse, sometimes beautiful, always poignant in its relation to the balance of life and death. Spoon River is deceptively light reading, but is not to be taken lightly.

After Death, Life Lamented

The epitaphs chronicle the aspirations and interactions, the defeats, the loves, lives, and deaths of these individuals. Most lament the fact that they were not appreciated, though a few are satisfied with their lives. Its timeless take-home message is that even in small-town America, nothing is ever as it seems.

Spoon River is an easy read, as most people’s lives are summed up in a page of poetry. It’s engaging because there are so many different personalities from so many walks of life. Whether it be the successful shopkeeper, the adulterer, unwed mother, or the poor but honest lawyer (Masters himself was a lawyer, serving with the famous Clarence Darrow’s law firm in the early 1900s), the reader is almost certain to relate to one.

Memorials to a Townspeople, Light on the Genealogy

Now townspeople of a different town, the inhabitants admit things about their lives that are a bit shocking, even to the contemporary reader. The book was highly controversial when it was first published (1915), causing quite a stir among political, literary, and religious conservatives. The experiences are loosely based on the small town in which Masters was born, one in which a bank collapse caused great turmoil. The book more than illustrates the trials and tribulations of people in rural America – it mirrors society in general and comments on all of our hypocritical behaviors. Families are loosely followed for two generations, but the book reads as though this entire fictional community passed on at the same time.

Life After Death (The Afterlife as a State of Melancholy)

The book provides interesting social commentary, sometimes amusing, usually melancholy. It reminds us of how one’s own epitaph can be so at odds with the printed obituary or verse carved onto a headstone, a diptych if there ever was! To paraphrase Masters, our true epitaphs are more lasting than stone. A great read for anyone interested in death and the afterlife.

Fringe Festival Performance – The Late Laureates of Laurel Hill (Cemetery)

Spoon River has been adapted to the stage in the past, even with musical scores added. As part of the 2006 Philly Fringe Live Arts Festival, a twilight reading of Spoon River will take place in Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. See the Fringe Festival website for details.

Stoneangels: As far as actually getting to Laurel Hill, you can see it from Roosevelt Boulevard, but you have no idea how to get in!

Ross Mitchell: Yes, thousands drive by every day on Kelly Drive, but the entrance is on Ridge Avenue. The neighborhood was not inviting in years gone by, although there’s definitely a change happening. The part of the cemetery that most people see is the Kelly Drive and Hunting Park intersection, but you can’t enter there-and you can only see a little sliver of the cemetery. You have no idea what’s above on the cliffs [overlooking the Schuylkill River]. The cemetery was built up here for the scenic vistas-the rural garden cemetery movement usually called for a lake-we have a river.
Stoneangels: Is there any plan to change the entrance to make it more accessible?

Ross Mitchell: We plan to improve the signage. The East Falls Economic Development Corporation has a grant for signage so hopefully we will be able to get listed on their signage on Kelly Drive. We are working on making East Falls a more desirable destination in general. We look at ourselves as the “Gateway to East Falls.”

Stoneangels: I see the new condos going up down the street.

Ross Mitchell: Hopefully they will bring a few thousand more people to the community. And with the Sherman Mills project up and running, East Falls will be a vibrant location with Laurel Hill as a cultural and ecological center uniting the community. In addition to increasing our signage on Kelly Drive, we want to reopen our Hunting Park gate and encourage joggers, bikers, and strollers who are going up Kelly Drive to make a little detour into the cemetery.

Stoneangels: I read in the “Stone in America” article that one of your first efforts to make Laurel Hill more accessible was to have it open on weekends. Personally, that was terrific for me! It was so hard for me to get in here; I really appreciated it.

Ross Mitchell: It was so hard to get in! Everybody works during the week and it was only open until noon on Saturday.

Stoneangels: Have you any parting words, Ross?

Ross Mitchell: People really need to come here and see Laurel Hill for themselves. They need to overcome their inhibition of ‘why would I want to visit a cemetery’ and realize that not all cemeteries are very depressing places. In fact I think this one is really a celebration of life. And you talk about, well, isn’t it disrespectful? If you look at the monuments and the sculpture in Laurel Hill you know these people wanted these monuments to be seen. They wouldn’t have spent thousands of dollars, in fact the largest mausoleum we have–the Disston mausoleum-in 1886 it cost $60,000 to build! A small modest mausoleum can easily cost $600,000 to a million dollars to build today.

Stoneangels: Why is it that people don’t build monuments and mausoleums anymore?

Ross Mitchell: People are building mausoleums today…at our sister cemetery, West Laurel Hill in Bala Cynwyd, there were three or four mausoleums built last year. But many people are not as rooted as they once were, with the mobility we have, people move all the time. We have large lots that are owned by families, but the family has spread out over the country. And many people are cremating nowadays, they’re not as rooted to the city, they’re not as rooted to the earth.

Stoneangels: Let me ask you about Sylvester Stallone and shooting the opening scenes of [the upcoming movie] “Rocky VI,” at Laurel Hill. Tell me about that.

Ross Mitchell: I wasn’t here. I was on vacation! (laughs). I did meet him when he came here before the shoot. He lived in Philadelphia for a number of years, and he loves Laurel Hill, so they shot here. He is on our Honorary Committee for our Gravedigger’s Ball.

Stoneangels: Does that mean he might come?

Ross Mitchell: I hope he comes and what I’d like to get him to do is autograph a pair of boxing gloves that we can auction off in our silent auction. How great would that be?! They had a stone made for Adrian, and they donated it to the cemetery. We have it mounted; if you go right around the corner (Adrian.jpg), right around the other side of the [gatehouse] building, it’s there all on its own.

Stoneangels: Where did they do the shooting?

Ross Mitchell: It was over on the south side, right across from Pemberton [John, Lieutenant General in the Confederate Army]; they got some good river views.

Stoneangels: Frank [Rausch, Laurel Hill staff member] told me the stone was engraved incorrectly?

Ross Mitchell: Yeah, Bill [Doran, Laurel Hill's Superintendent] had to get it re-done at the last minute.

Stoneangels: Old Mortality-type work.

Ross Mitchell: And we’re also going to be involved with the Fringe Festival. We are going to have a program here, have you ever heard of the Spoon River Anthology? You need to read this! By Edgar Lee Masters. It is a series of epitaphs, people speaking from the grave and gossiping about one another. And it’s so interesting; it’s really quite a good read. It’s everybody lamenting their losses and what they didn’t do in life, or bragging. It’s everybody from a made-up Mid-western town speaking from the grave, talking about themselves, and what they accomplished or didn’t accomplish and talking about each other! So we’re going to have group of poets and actors reading from Spoon River in the cemetery at dusk.

Stoneangels: Life after death–hiding behind the tombstones?

Ross Mitchell: We are working out the details – people will be invited to bring their chairs and blankets, and then we’re going to have an art show and reception next door, with some relevant art.

Stoneangels: That’s in September, right?

Ross Mitchell: Right after Labor Day, September 9th.

Next: Visiting Laurel Hill: Why The Cemetery Is A Celebration of Life