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Recently there was a controversy at a Cincinnati cemetery
where a 7-foot-tall Sponge Bob Square Pants statue had been placed as a grave
marker. Although the management of the
cemetery initially approved the statue, they later removed it, seemingly
believing that it was not dignified enough for the surroundings and that it
could be a potential affront to others who wished to pay their respects to
their dearly departed. After all, the
tradition in American cemeteries seems to be gravity and modesty. Your marker is to be lost among the other
non-descript markers of various sizes.
Your grave marker is the gray flannel suit for your mortal coil. You are
expected to blend in, not outshine.
After all, you are dead: how flamboyant is that? You will be given a stone
on which people can tell your religion, name, birth and death dates and, maybe
if you are lucky, a mawkishly trite little epigram. This is what the living owe you in America:
no more and no less. Don’t complain.
Nobody ever does.
Not so in other parts of the world! Robert Richfield, in
fact, travels the world and photographs lavish mementi mori. In many of his photos (current and past) we
see that graves in parts of Europe and Latin America are often elaborately
decorated and intricately personalized.
As you can see from the photo in this review, every effort is made to
distinguish this grave from others.
Ornate displays of flowers abound alongside religious trinkets, photos
of the deceased, various doodads from the deceased’s private life and even
images of the cartoon characters and pop culture icons which entertained and
delighted the person. In this current show by Richfield at the Klotz Gallery,
we see images of such graves from three locations: Mexico, Nicaragua and
Sardinia.
Why is there such a difference between cultures in regard
to the burial and remembrance of the dead?
Klotz makes some interesting points in his press release for the
show. In Mexico, for instance, there
seems to be a greater sense of permeability between the worlds of the living
and the dead. In the US we sequester the
dead under 6 feet of dirt and consign them to oblivion through a perfunctory
ceremony and a bland, cold resting place.
They are there – they are gone – we have to ‘move on.’ In Mexico the
dead often remain present in the lives of the living and, on the Day of the
Dead, Klotz points out that they are literally ‘lured’ back to the dinner table
through the use of the food they loved and the trinkets and photos that will
help them remember their previous lives.
In the US we show gratitude and then are expected to, basically,
forget. In Mexico a connection remains
and is celebrated and annually reinforced.
This division could be due to the fact that the origins
of Christianity were different in the US from the origins of Christianity in
Latin America. We were sired by the
culture of die-hard Dutch and English Calvinists. In Latin America, Catholicism melded with the
various types of rural indigenous religions.
This hybrid-type of Christianity still retains, perhaps, to this day,
the types of ‘magical’ beliefs that you almost always find in pre-industrial
agricultural societies.
I first saw Richfield’s work at Klotz a couple years ago
when he presented his “Still Life” show.
At this time Richfield was photographing mementi mori in Portugal. There are funerary structures in Portugal
which contain several coffins apiece.
Each coffin goes into a little rectangular concrete cubicle, which is
sealed once the coffin is pushed inside.
Looking at the structure you see a small building divided by up and down
rows of these small chambers. But
outside the sealed entrance of each cubicle is also a little display case
provided for the family and friends to leave memento mori. A glass window is then shut so that when
looking at the structure you see these displays of affection in the various
square windows that make up the front of the building. Richfield relished photographing these
floral, religious and personal displays through the sealed glass, since the
image often allowed a view into the display case as well as a reflection of the
outer-world facing the case.
Since the current photos are of graves that are outside,
these photos are much more direct. The
colors are brighter, frames are filled with sunlight and much more detail is
apparent. The only real photographic
‘tricks’ employed would seem to involve altering the distances between
‘subject-to-camera’ in order to bring greater or lesser focus to various
details. He wisely allows the images to
speak for themselves.
In Cincinnati a family wanted to call attention to the
uniqueness of their departed relative and they were quashed. They chose a cartoon character as a monument
because they knew that a funeral and burial should not just be gravity and
modesty. These photos by Richfield validate
this attitude. They show that in many parts of the world a deep sense of loss
is mingled with a sense of whimsy, pride, gratefulness and a sense that the
real presence of the person who lived is still with us and still to be
treasured. These photos allow a remarkable reflection on the process of grief
and mourning in societies that have not succumbed to the bland secularization
of death we find in the US.
