Wandering Graveyards
On long strolls, photography, and historical documentation
Every now and then, as I wander a graveyard taking photos, someone will stop me and ask me what I’m doing.
This was the case yesterday as I was strolling around Savage Cemetery in the old town of Savage, Maryland.
Him: You have family here?
Me: No. I just hang out in graveyards. How about you?
Him: Groundskeeper.
Me: By the looks of it, this all goes back to the late 19th century?
Him: (Taken off guard a bit, realizing I’m not a ne'er-do-well). Eighteen-eighty-six.
Me: I’m noticing a lot of Masonic symbols. Are we near an old Lodge?
Him: (Now relaxed). Yeah, it’s right up the hill. (And he starts telling me a bit about the cemetery).
I started hiking around graveyards with my grandfather. He was something of a self-taught genealogist back in the days when those sorts roamed both cemeteries and the microfiche rooms of local historical societies.
Sometimes I think to myself that graveyards are among the best things that we’ve ever produced as a human species. They are places that combine memorialization, documentation, art and landscape architecture in creating what are often sublime places to think and reflect. So, I like to think that by snapping photographs in these places, I might be sharing in what is really a form of long-tail chronicling… about people, families, townsfolk, and the people who buried them.