24-NOV-2014
Southern Gothic, Beaufort, South Carolina, 2014
Spanish moss is often associated with the literature and lore of the old south. It is a plant that feeds on trees, particularly the Southern Live Oak and the Crepe myrtle. It is often associated with the Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place in the Old South. In this image, filtered light makes the moss seem translucent, blending green and grey textures within this mass of hanging vines. The effect echoes the darkly romantic traditions and legends of the Antebellum South.
24-NOV-2014
The Lost Cause, St. Helena’s Episcopal Church, Beaufort, South Carolina, 2014
The vivid primary colors I found resting upon a weathered military grave express the fact that the spirit of the Confederate “Lost Cause” is still very much alive in the present day. Many such flags decorate cemeteries through the South. (This church was used as a hospital during the Civil War, and some of this cemetery’s gravestones were used as operating tables.)
24-NOV-2014
On guard, Beaufort, South Carolina, 2014
A pair of dogs patiently stand guard at the entrance of this Beaufort residence. I include just enough of the surrounding decorations to express the Southern charm of the place. There is also an amusing contrast in the attention level of these guardians. The larger dog has apparently lost interest in the photographer. The smaller dog, however, remains focused on my lens.
24-NOV-2014
An old wall comes to life, Beaufort, South Carolina, 2014
A richly colored garland of fresh ivy climbs a wall that has enclosed a Beaufort mansion for more than a hundred and fifty years. Soft dappled light plays upon the scarred and cracked masonry. The focal point of the image is the symbolic blemish resembling an oval “eye” near the top of the frame on the right. If we can see it as an eye, the wall seems to be as alive as the ivy that grows up the left hand side of the frame.
25-NOV-2014
Egret along the Inland Waterway, just off the Georgia coast, 2014
I made this photograph from the top deck of our ship during a rainsquall. The very flat light intensifies the colors of the trees and the marsh grass, while a tiny white egret stands out so strongly that it dominates the scene. The rain and flat light offers a study of scale incongruity, saturated color and stark contrasts, produced entirely by nature itself.
25-NOV-2014
Gull squadron, off Georgia coast, 2014
As we approached Savannah, swarms of seagulls trailed in our wake. They were looking for bits of food churned up from the seabed by our ship’s engines. One member of this squadron of gulls has already dropped into the water to feast on such morsels, while its colleagues remain aloft in search of a meal. I converted the image to black and white to abstract the image and stress the composition created by the outstretched wings.
25-NOV-2014
Convoy approaching Savannah, Georgia, 2014
A heavy fog greeted us as our ship neared Savannah’s harbor. Three boats followed in our wake, in convoy with hundreds of hungry seagulls. I placed my horizon line high in the frame, limiting the amount of featureless sky, and filling most of the image with gulls and ships. There is just enough blue/green color in the image to add a taste of the ocean itself to the image.
25-NOV-2014
Victorian Valhalla, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, 2014
Bonaventure is Savannah’s most hauntingly beautiful cemetery. Its Southern Gothic character has captured the imaginations of writers, poets, photographers and filmmakers over the last 150 years. I walked among its Victorian tombs in a light drizzle for over an hour, and made several hundred images in this lush city of the dead. I offer seven of them here. Each speaks to us of remembrance, the passage of time, and a belief in immortality. In this image, I express Bonaventure’s atmosphere, largely defined by a forest of live oaks draped in Spanish moss. This moss softly frames the image in the foreground, and more of it is softens the background. Lodged among these trees is flowering foliage, a towering obelisk symbolizing immense wealth and prestige, and several softly focused tombs included as context.
25-NOV-2014
A haunted place, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, 2014
Some say Savannah is the “world’s most haunted city,” and if so, Bonaventure must be the “world’s most haunted cemetery,” inhabited by angels, cherubs, and lifelike renderings of the departed. In this image, I provide a haunting context for one of Bonaventure’s notable Victorian sculptural figures. I place the monument within the embrace of one of the many moss-laden oak trees that define Bonaventure’s unique character among the world’s burying-grounds. The scene is pure “Southern-Gothic.” It blends sentiment, remembrance, and mystery to produce a sense of haunted beauty.
25-NOV-2014
Gracie Watson, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, 2014
By far the most famous ghost said to haunt Bonaventure Cemetery belongs to a child named Gracie Watson, who died in 1889 of pneumonia at the age of six. Sculptor John Walz created this life-sized marble statue of “Little Gracie” after studying photographs of the child. It has become the single most visited gravesite in this 100-acre cemetery. So many visitors touched the statue that an iron fence was erected to protect it from wear. (Walz created many other monuments at Bonaventure, and one of the cemetery’s streets is named in his honor. He died in 1922, and is buried in Bonaventure. Ironically, no headstone marks his gravesite.)
This statue is the most photographed monument at Bonaventure. Photographers invariably push their cameras between the bars in the fence to get a clear shot of the statue. I deliberately stepped back to include the fence itself in my own image of this monument. In doing so, I symbolically separate life from death, putting Gracie Watson well beyond our reach. I also convert the image to black and white, abstracting the scene and making the white marble statue seem more ghostly than it actually is.
25-NOV-2014
Nature’s toll, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, 2014
This coastal city is a hot, moist and humid place for much of the year. Bonaventure Cemetery is known as a “City of the Dead,” set within an environment of intensely thriving plant life. Many of Bonaventure’s monuments are cleaned regularly, and are pristine. However other grave monuments have fallen into disrepair, drastically altered by the effects of time itself. I used a telephoto lens here to emphasize the toll that nature can take upon these monuments to the dead. This discolored marble figure seems to acknowledge this toll, bending its head in acquiescence.
25-NOV-2014
Mythology in marble, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, 2014
Romantic tragedy is another staple in Southern Gothic tales and literature. Visitors to this Bonaventure grave of Corinne Elliot Lawton are eager to believe the lurid tour guide tales of how she lived and died. Such guides theatrically proclaim that Corrine was madly in love with a man “below her station,” and that her parents (her father was a Confederate General) would not approve of their relationship. They say that the General preferred an arranged marriage. They claim that Corinne died by her own hand in 1887, “throwing herself into a river” just beyond this cemetery on the night before her arranged wedding. She is buried under this contemplative sculpture of herself, created by Italian artist Benedetto Civiletti. Visitors to Bonaventure enjoy believing in such romantic fantasies, eagerly accepting them and repeating them to others as fact. I have researched this story, and learned that what our tour guide told us about Corrine Elliot Lawton’s death is pure Southern Gothic fiction, with no basis in fact. Corrine’s mother happened to keep a diary, preserved by the Georgia Historical Society. There is no mention of any arranged marriage or suicide in this diary. The diary does mention that Corrine fell ill just days before her death. Pneumonia? Yellow Fever? The disease is not known, but it was illness that took Corrine Elliot Lawton’s life, not suicide.
I photographed the tomb of Corrine Lawton here as an abstraction. I use monochromatic sepia tonality here, similar to images of this era. By removing color, I leave more to the viewer’s imagination. I include the adjoining tree branches at left to rhythmically echo the curves of the folds in the statue’s garment, as well as to obscure distracting verbal information on the grave marker. The figure symbolizes a young Victorian woman wondering why her life has ended so soon. Victorian grave monuments are highly romanticized versions of life, more symbolic than real. This talented sculptor creates myth out of marble. Corrine Elliot Lawton’s life remains the stuff of tour-guide mythology nearly 140 years after her burial below this statue.