Road Side Memorials
By Christopher Paquette
15 May 2008
I have been photographing road side memorials for several years, documenting them as I find them on my photographic road trips throughout Pennsylvania and the surrounding Delaware Valley.
In the Southwestern U.S., and among Hispanic cultures in particular, these memorials are called Descansos, which means "resting place". Long before the automobile, funeral processions involved carrying the coffin sometimes long distances from the church to the cemetery. The pallbearers would need to stop and rest along the way. At these resting places, mourners would many times create small crosses or arrangements out of twigs, branches, or flowers that were gathered at the resting site. These were left along the road side place of rest and could later be seen by other travelers and be recognized as the Descansos.
I am attracted to modern day memorials for their qualities as Folk Art. They are spontaneous expressions of grief, and a public tribute to the loss of a loved one. I see in them traces of 18th and 19th century Pennsylvania German tombstone folk art, that consisted of the use of tulips, lilies, stars, and other decorative objects that celebrated life, as opposed to focusing on the tragedy of death.
As I find these memorials, I attempt to create the best photograph I can make with what is presented to me. I am always mindful that this is the place where someone, or in many cases several people, have died. I never touch or alter the memorials in any way, and I always treat the entire scene as a sacred place.
2 responses
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Kel Casey gave props (15 Apr 2009):
Great theme. Somehow they always strike me as tacky, along with the tragic feel.
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Cormac Shea said (22 May 2009):
I have been photographing roadside memorials in South Jersey for about a year, and I now have over 100 pics posted on my myspace (myspace-dot-com slash cormacshea).
My feelings about them are about the same as yours - I never disturb the site, even to repair or straighten out things that fell over, etc.
