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

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.

Artist Statement

“Cemetery and Penitentiary Photography” was the working title of this show. The actual title of the show became “Confinement in Solitude.” In this article I’m going to explain how I came up with that title. Here’s my Artist’s Statement for the show:

“Confinement in Solitude”

These words, used to describe Eastern State Penitentiary’s philosophy toward criminals, eerily parallel that of a cemetery. ESP’s original idea that freedom (from criminal behavior) could be achieved through confinement was less than successful. Isn’t everything about the tension between freedom and confinement? Cemetery angels vividly portray this–creatures of flight, frozen in stone.

I’d long been a fan of urban decay-beauty in detritus. Perhaps one reason I enjoy photographing old cemeteries and Eastern State Penitentiary is this oppressive attraction they both possess. But how to connect the two? Coming up with an Artist’s Statement is considerably more difficult than coming up with a title for an individual piece of artwork. I would rather eat bees than do either. Such contemplative writing requires more soul-searching, I believe, than the actual creation of the art itself. So much of the creative process is feeling, rather than overt planning. Like the artist N.C. Wyeth said, in order to create a successful piece of artwork, you must have an emotional connection with the subject. Agreed, but how do you put that into words?

I don’t particularly care for writing about my work because I feel I expose more of myself with words and I risk assigning specific meaning to my work. I’d rather leave it to individuals to find their own meaning in the art. For instance, if I took a picture of a pork chop, hung it in a gallery, and labeled it “Pork Chop,” most people wouldn’t look twice it at. They’d think, “Yep, that’s a pork chop alright.” On the other hand, if the same photograph were untitled, people might think that metaphorically, I’m commenting on the carnivorous nature of man, or space and the passage of time. Subconsciously, I might be. You get the idea.

So even though labels are for jelly jars, I am expected to come up with titles and Artist Statements. So how to make them relevant without giving away the farm? In analyzing the connection between angels and prisons, I gave up early on obvious titles, e.g. “Angels and Devils” (while there were angels in my photographs, the devils were only implied); “God’s Servants and Satan’s Minions” (a bit harsh on the shoplifters and other petty criminals who occupied Eastern State); or “Angels and Penitents.” That last one had promise.

Crime and Punishment in the Victorian Age

When the prison opened in 1829, its founders believed that solitude would “make the criminal regretful and penitent” (hence the new word Penitentiary added to our language). Legislation specifying “separate or solitary confinement at labor” was passed. This correctional theory, as practiced in Philadelphia, became known as the Pennsylvania System, and it became world-famous.

In 1913, The Pennsylvania System of confinement with solitude was abandoned at Eastern State. The system had actually broken down decades earlier, prompted by Charles Dickens’ criticism of the philosophy. He visited the United States in 1842 to see Niagara Falls and Eastern State Penitentiary–two wonders of the Victorian world. He later wrote, “The System is rigid, strict and hopeless solitary confinement, and I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong…”

So Eastern State’s original concept of freedom (from criminal behavior) through confinement, failed. Stone walls, like stone wings, fail to ascend the arc to freedom.

Death and Mourning in the Victorian Age

Founded in the Victorian 1830s, both Eastern State Penitentiary and the great garden cemeteries like Laurel Hill (Philadelphia) speak volumes about American societal beliefs and norms at the time. Both are examples of our attempt to come to terms with the undesirable realities of death and crime–we confine them both in solitude. We reward them with burial and imprisonment, respectively –”interment” vs. “internment.” Both Eastern State and Laurel Hill were architectural wonders created in a rural setting–Philadelphia had not yet grown to reach them. Penitence and mourning practices both reached stellar proportions in that era (when a family member died, the official mourning period usually lasted a year, during which time ritualistic wearing of black clothing was observed), as did the epic flourish of angels and other ornate cemetery statuary.

Funny how the words interment and internment get confused. Interment is burial; internment is simply imprisonment. If you had asked the inmates at Eastern State to compare their confinement in solitude with that of those interred at Laurel Hill, they may not have thought the difference appreciable. They may have felt like the stone angels–or as T.E. Lawrence would say, “the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God’s stage.” To me, cemetery angels vividly portray the tension between freedom and confinement that inmates at Eastern State must have felt. This tension between freedom and confinement–isn’t that what life is all about?

At life’s end, some of us would like to believe that angels, as our celestial companions, will bear us home. Not surprisingly then, angels are a common symbol in cemeteries. It could be argued that angels benefit the living more than the dead-they offer us comfort while softening the finality of death. Personally, I see them as the embodiment of the tension between freedom and confinement-a tension we all feel. These angels reside inside a crypt in Baltimore’s Greenmount Cemetery. They sit with heads bowed, as if guarding the bodies of the departed souls, alleviating the gloom of these below-ground family burial places.

Foo Dogs

Another type of protector–this one spiritual– is the foo dog, which guards Chinese graves. This lion-like creature resulted when Indian Buddhist missionaries described lions to Chinese artists (who were not familiar with such beasts!). These powerful mythic guardians have traditionally stood in front of Chinese imperial palaces, emperors’ tombs and government offices since the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD). There are scattered Chinese divisions in cemeteries around Philadelphia (which has a Chinatown in its center city district). This image was made in Abington, PA (northeast of Philadelphia).

Star of David

Not only a sign of redemption, but the universal symbol of the Jewish people. Jews use the Star of David as it was used for many centuries: as a magical good luck symbol and as a sign of Jewish identity. It has only achieved this latter status since the Middle Ages. At that time it started to appear on flags, tombstones, and synagogue decorations. The Star of David, or magen David (‘Shield of David’) gets its name from the folklore that David carried a hexagram-shaped shield during his defeat of Goliath. Hence the symbol’s association with protection and good luck.

Read more:

• http://www.byzant.com
• http://www.menorah.org

Celtic Cross

When we look at the cross, we typically don’t think of death. More likely, we think of a holy afterlife. Christians think of redemption–salvation from sin through Christ ’s sacrifice, allowing them entry into Heaven.

While one would assume that the cross itself originated as a Christian symbol (Christ died on a cross of wood), it may surprise you to know that the cross shape itself had been used by many ancient civilizations, long before the dawn of Christianity. Cari Buziak states that “Its four arms were perfect for denoting the four elements, the four directions of the compass, and the four parts of man – mind, body, soul and heart.”

The Celtic cross is the Latin cross with a circle over the intersection. While a commonly used Christian symbol, its origin is largely unknown and what it represents is open to interpretation. The addition of the ring around the cross has had many explanations, everything from sun worship and symbolism, to creating a shape with the cross that was well contained and aesthetically pleasing. Some hold that the Celtic cross was an ancient measuring instrument used for accurate navigation, astronomy and surveying. Others suggest that the great stone Celtic Crosses carved from the standing stones of the Druids were originally phallic symbols, just carved into crosses to disguise their original purpose. What historians do know for sure is that the symbol came into being around the ninth century, when Christianity was new to Celtic Britain and Ireland. The large stone crosses that dot the landscape of Ireland, Scotland, and other parts of Europe where Celtic Christianity originated are reminders of the early Celtic Church.

When seen in cemeteries, The Celtic or Irish cross may represent someone of Irish descent, but in a general sense it represents eternity-the promise of an afterlife.

Read more:

• http://www.celtarts.com
• http://www.world-mysteries.com

Further Exploration into the Afterlife

Is there more to our existence than this life on earth? Many like to think so. People may have contrived the idea of an afterlife simply because death, the great unknown, scares them. When asked where he expected to end up, Mark Twain said he preferred heaven for climate, the other place for company. (Excerpt From Captain Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven)

Symbolism is one of the ways we deal with our mortality, thus it runs rampant in funerary art. It’s a basic tenet of psychology that giving a name or a symbol to any idea makes us feel we have more control over the idea. It makes us feel better. People associate certain animals, plants, or other objects with specific attributes of our existence. A bird in flight may represent a soul borne aloft, a wreath, glory. We want an afterlife, it seems. But wait – is all this symbolism to comfort the living or honor the dead? Maybe it’s one and the same.

If you are curious about specific symbols you’ve seen, you may want to browse these sites:

• http://www.alsirat.com
• http://www.vintageviews.org

There is also a lovely book called Stories in Stone: The Complete Guide to Cemetery Symbolism, by Douglas Keister