Cemeteries are places that, to some extent, escape the fast pace of everyday life.
Cemeteries are often large parks that have developed over centuries, creating expansive spaces for tranquility, reflection, and social interaction in the central areas of expensive major cities, often with ancient trees and dilapidated tombs whose somber secrets inspire our imagination. Friedhof, the German word for cemetery, literally sounds like a place of peace, and that says just about everything.
The modern blends with traces of the past. Ashes scattered across natural meadows and woodland areas reveal a longing for a connection to nature and a spirituality beyond religious traditions. The opulent tombs of the wealthy demonstrate how social expectations and status often outlast the lives of individuals.
The modern also appears in the form of people using smartphones, on a call in a cemetery café, working on a laptop, or, like me, trying to take a picture with the mobile phone camera. The attempt also teaches us how much of this world, in both the here and the hereafter, eludes our modern technology. In general, photography is not suited to depicting reality objectively. Even in the right moment, with skillfully chosen image crop and exposure remains the inadequacy of a technical snapshot, missing details that human senses perceive or fill in. This is why painting and visual arts still exist despite analog and digital photography technology, but there are still some amateurish snapshots that have something to tell us.
Mourning and Remembrance need no Graves
The fact that cemeteries have fascinated me ever since I’ve lived in the big city also has to do with their culture. That cemeteries fascinate me more now than they used to also has to do with transience. The older we get, the more often we had to deal with death, and at some point, our own final hour will strike. It needs no graves to mourn, to remember, and to to grapple with impermanence. What is the point of the stone if home and family have been scattered to many different places through flight or relocation? Metropolitan cemeteries are not only resting places and parks, but also monument where people pilger to pay tribute to inspiring celebrities.
What is truly scary, however, is the price of two cups of coffee and a piece of sweet cake at the cemetery café.
Life, Death, and Hope
Mourning and “dancing, even on graves”, like the songwriter Westernhagen sang, are not mutually exclusive. Rebirth exists at least collectively: Again and again, a new human being is born. Hope and the longing for peace and justice despite all unjust suffering, fate and chance, but also war, and in the end remains at least a tombstone as a monument or a ein Grabstein als Denkmal oder Stolpersteine (stumbing stones) in the city, so that we don’t forget to fight for a better world, if we can.
Vacant lots, parks, and cemeteries escape the logic of intensive use. No agriculture, no hobby gardening, no restaurants. No houses, but habitat! Here, plants grow, animals live, and sometimes also people do live here or spend some longer time, especially when they are otherwise being left with less and less living space. Homeless prefer to put their tents below brigdes for there is no rain, but a remote cemetery corner seems more suitable than a playground or one of the few official users’ rooms.
Religion also stands up against the hectic pace and pressure of the performance- and consumer-oriented society. Although religons have no convincing answers to suffering and injustice either, at least they act and help people who are otherwise often repressed and forgotten. Churches, mosques and cemeteries remain places that escape the hectic pace and performance pressure of modern everyday life to some extent.
From Clichee to unexpected Observation
When I want to show the aesthetic of transience with rusty wrought-iron fences, spider webs and crumbling stones, then I’ll ignore an overflowing trash can or spare such critical images for another series that fits better. But while looking for a suitable position for a photo that matches my ideas, I might spot completely different details that would have otherwise escaped me. Butterflies, grasshoppers, squirrels, chestnuts, or an unusual, overlooked tombstone.
My photographic selection shows what I saw and what I wanted to hold, influenced by images, stories and thoughts as well, that shaped my view. What you, in turn, see and discover in my pictures may ultimately be something else entirely.
Authentic Snapshots
Those are often photographies taken in passing, like notes of ideas on hikes and trips: After having put a great deal of thought and effort into the writing at times, I will write more articles like this one again in the future, even if neither the text nor the images will change the world. Like here: who looks closely notices a squirrel with a big nut in its mouth. Later I saw how a cat creeping up on the squirrel and pursuing it relentlessly, while the agile creature made sharp turns and finally vanished up a tree.
Overgrown graves, ruined walls, and the mysterious statue of the veiled lady:
I discovered a fascinating, lesser-known cemetery while hiking on the Isle of Skye during a Schottland trip shortly before Brexit, a dilapidated lost place next to ruins of an abondoned village in a lonely valley. Ironcally the harmony was disturbed specifically by two low-flying military aircraft and additionally overshadowed by the fear of a storm, before the arrival of which we might not have been able to leave the valley quickly enough.
I am also a fried of contrast. Praised as critical photography, but often dismissed with an uncomprehending shake of the head, are my pictures of factories or trash not far from beautiful tombs or established must-see sights. The factory in the background of the Glasgow Necropolis is probably connected to the breweries right next to the popular cemetery.
Beer for the Dead
The beer for the dead does have a decidedly spiritual side after all. Here, someone placed a beer bottle in the arm of the stone statue of a saint clinging to a grave cross. The symbolic offering to the dead arrives too late in practical terms. The beer must be drunk by the living, just like the culinary offers which are enjoyed together in South America during the Day of the Dead, on an All Souls’ Day that is likely still mild and summery. The beer bottle had also disappeared again by the time I passed by the same spot later on.
Calculating the time between birth and death is a problem math problem with a result that can make you sad sometimes, while other tombstones speak of gratitude and a fulfilled life, yet others make you smile with their funny names..
All that was going through my mind as I strolled through the cemetery. When we photograph cemeteries, we can pass on a piece of this memory and inspire others to visit places of reflection. The smartphone remains in the pocket most of the time, and even my sketchbook. But in the bustling cemetery café, at the very latest, it comes up again. Actually, different cemeteries are not like one another. I took my pictures over the course of several years at various cemeteries in several different cities, including Berlin and Glasgow.
