San Rafael Valley, AZ ~~ Photo by Bill Haas

Thursday, November 26, 2009

JUST GIMME A PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER!

I don't mean to be macabre, but some of the crypt embellishments in the St. Louis Cemetery Number One in New Orleans impressed me. Yeah-Yeah! Someone once also told me I'd photograph just about ANYthing! So until I show you my "Utility Pole Series," (you think I'm joking?!!), you'll just have to settle for photos of some of the little doo-dads survivors have included on dead people's burial boxes.
Perhaps in those days, one might suppose crypt embellishments would distinguish you from the poor sap lying next door. Or your bereaved loved ones (or survivors) needed to indicate to your neighbors just how high you were held in their esteem. (Or how grateful they were to have been "remembered"!)
There's a loose head rolling around here somewhere.
OK OK, I admit: I didn't have anything better to do with these photos!!! But the real truth is, I love recognizing and capturing on film the world around me, the world I live in -- sometimes breathtaking, sometimes pedestrian, commonplace and boring.

3 comments:

Linda said...

I love this sort of architecture and people who pay attention to details.

And now, for another brand new subject.........

Happy Thanksgiving!

(Is Sambo getting a turkey leg?)

Ilene said...

Lorna, New Orleans was once famous for its interesting cemetery statuary. Unfortunately most of the best ones have been looted over the years. I also suspect that after Katrina, even more was looted.

I can remember, as a child, seeing some amazing statues, some of them grieving, some macabre, and some even humorous.

I also remember once, when I was in High School, we snuck into a cemetery and I climbed a wall where one of the crypts high above was opened. The marble frontispiece had come off and the bricks were all crumbling. I reached in and pulled out what I thought was a branch. I handed it to my friend, Maxine, from Houston, and jokingly told her it was a bone. She shrieked in horror! I laughed and told her it was only a branch. Then I looked at it more closely and realized, shit! It WAS a bone! I shrieked and fell off the wall and scratched up both my knees.

I was a brat. ;^)

Hope to see you Sunday!

Lorna... said...

Ilene? Ilene VanGossen? Is that YOU? Whadda ya mean "WAS" a brat?!!!!! I just want to know when it was, exactly, that you stopped being a brat!!!

Lorna