These images are a meditation about the dialog between symbol and setting, endurance and transience, and the liminal space between remembering and forgetting.
There are old, remote burial grounds scattered in the California deserts. Wind-swept emptiness underscores their isolation. Many seem forgotten; some abandoned. Monuments and markers are decayed, broken, or gone. Names of the dead are erased by weather and time.
Some graves, even unmarked plots, are decorated — touching gestures of grief and memory. Artificial flowers, flags, and the whimsical decorate the mounds of dirt and rock rings. The dead are remembered, and honored.
I wonder about those buried; about who came to leave respects. I am moved by the compelling memorials for both known and nameless. There is beauty and and acknowledgement in remembrance.
