Cemetery Photography: Cemeteries of NYC

Some people think my directionless wanderings around the vast cemeteries of New York City are strange. I do not disagree with that assessment.

I sometimes feel I am drawn in by the funerary art and sculpture, and specifically I am drawn to its decayed condition. The rotted out crosses, the headless Jesuses and faceless Marys, and the weather-worn decay of the religious symbols serve as a visual metaphor for my own lapsed catholicism.

Other elements of funerary art -- sepulchral portraits, stained glass, items left at gravestones -- themselves express a range of experiences, but I gravitate toward the most rugged and compromised of these objects. Vandalised stained glass, showing a smashed out heart of Jesus that exposes the sight of hundreds of tombstones, assumes a meaning deeper than the seemingly platitudinous use of Christ's image in ritual and ceremony. Cracked and clouded-over portraits, embedded into tombstones as sepulchral portraits, express by their physical condition the passage of time and the fading memory of our forbears. These portraits, most from the early part of the 20th century, also embody a distinct style of portraiture which has always enchanted me.

As strange as they might seem I have, however, made these wanderings productive. I am a cemetery photographer. I have taken photos of gravesites for people from around the world: geneologists, historians, inheritance seekers, and others who need information that was recorded on gravestones but nowhere else. It is an endlessly satisfying pursuit.

If you are a geneologist, historian, treetracer, or anyone else needing photos of a particular grave marker from a Queens, New York, cemetery, I may be able to help. Contact me for details.