The reposed / photographs by William K. Greiner ; foreword by Thomas Lynch ; introduction by Steven Maklansky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greiner, William K.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Greiner, William K.

Photography, Artistic.

Cemeteries--Louisiana--Pictorial works.

Cemeteries.

Louisiana.

Genre:

Pictorial works.

Illustrated works.

Physical Description:

xv, 125 pages : chiefly illustrations (some color) ; 27 x 31 cm

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [1999]

Summary:

The most obvious distinction of many south Louisiana cemeteries is that hardly anyone is buried in them. In the delta, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, the land is flat, wet, and often below sea level, so coffins are placed in elevated tombs, vaults, and mausoleums. Truly cities of the dead, these cemeteries contain buildings of stone or brick, marble statues, wrought-iron fences, narrow passages, and hidden enclaves. And, like any city, they are densely packed with bodies.

In sixty-two stunning photographs, William K. Greiner captures the visual landscape of these ghostly neighborhoods. A colorful respite from the gray conventions of graveyard photography, his images leap off the page with brilliant hues. His pictures are not just about graves, but also about the lives and values of the people who inhabit and visit them. Most of his portraits are of humble and inconspicuous burial grounds. Located somewhere between town and country, they exist as geographic testimony to our Comprehension of the graveyard as the transitional space between heaven and earth. In these photographs, there is no great divide; streetlamps and telephone wires intrude into the heavens, supermarkets and mausoleums share parking lots, and religious and secular symbols vie for attention.

Where we expect to find solemn stones, Greiner points to a new lexicon of mourning. Plastic dolls, polyester ribbons, Styrofoam letters, and brilliant bouquets of plastic flowers adorn these graves and fill these photos. In these sepulchral communities, holidays are marked with Valentine hearts, Fourth of July arrangements, and Christmas decorations, and bingo boards and Harley-Davidson models stand assilent reminders of the daily lives the residents once lived.

Not a soul appears in these images, but they are haunted none the less, by the skeletons of flowers, by chipped statuettes, by faded pictures, and by overgrown grass; by the tangible evidence of the passing visits of those who have come to bury or remember their clear departed; by passing clouds, and by the passage of time. In his striking memorials to these memorials, Grein er honors the colorful cast of characters, both alive and dead, whose telling traces he has found left behind.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0807124133

OCLC:

41118879