Thursday, July 2, 2009

rest in pieces


I walk through the small busy marché outside the cemetery walls and enter the floating stillness within a garden of perpetual rest...
alone in the bright light of day I am unafraid to approach the neglected tombs of forgotten souls - one now marked by only a broken crucifix and a few fallen twigs - a perfectly untouched nature morte that bespeaks the poetics of death more eloquently than the most ornamented graves...

[Cimetière de Belleville, a small cemetery with one prominent "resident" whom I googled - Léon GAUMONT (1864-1946), an inventor, engineer, industrialist and a pioneer of the motion picture industry]

4 comments:

Owen said...

Gina, love this post; the title, the text, the quietly stated photo. Am not sure I've been in Belleville Cemetery, but love the peace and quiet one can find in such places. Sometimes wonder if these things are getting broken by accident, of if there is intention at work... have seen, and photographed, an awful lot of broken objects in cemeteries. Have a great weekend...

Gina V said...

Thanks, Owen...I appreciate your appreciation! Love to see your "broken objects in cemeteries" pics...I could spend a lot more time capturing these images, too!

Owen said...

Just saw your message about an older post... yes, absolutely, I think it is important to preserve these, if only in images, before they disappear entirely. Another favorite theme is the small portraits of people that often appear on tombs, over the years they tend to fade away... have photographed alot of them in various states of disappearing, weathering away. Have a great weekend !

PeterParis said...

The negelected tombs have sometimes a specific beauty! ... and there are so many of them in the old cemeteries!