Blog Archives
everything will run out
Mt. Zion Cemetery, in Crosby County, isn’t visible from the highway. To get there, you drive past a farmhouse and down a narrow dirt path called Dump Ground Road. Most of the graves are unnamed. Most of the people buried there are black. So that’s one thing to think about.
And the other thing to think about is how this part of the state sits atop the Ogalalla Aquifer, whose water is pumped out (mostly for irrigation) at a rate that far outpaces its replenishment. (Want to know more? Read Running Out: in search of water on the high plains by Lucas Bessire.)
Anyway, somethings things line up in a particular way that shifts your brain around and lets you think about it all in a different way.
Crosbyton, Texas
photographed 7.28.2024
church/yard
Adobe + crosses + clouds + a churchyard: a perfect photography day.
San José de Gracia church
Las Tampas, New Mexico
photographed 7.2.2024
bound for the infinite
This is one of my favorite cemeteries to photograph, and I’ve never even been inside; it’s locked all the time. There’s a path all the around the outside and the wall’s almost always low enough to see/photograph the graves.
Or if you are really lucky, you can get the wall, the graves, the mountains, and a fast-approaching thunderstorm all in one shot. (And then, if you hurry, you can get back to your car to wait out that rain.)
Galisteo, New Mexico
photographed 7.1.2024
lilies, considered
On the front end of a recent trip, we encountered a cemetery that was home to approximately all the stickers in the entire world; it was in a town called Old Dime Box.
On the way back to the airport at the other end of the trip, we found a well-organized and manicured cemetery; it was in a town called Dime Box.
Go figure.
St. John’s Lutheran Cemetery
Dime Box, Texas
photographed 6.15.2024
angel, three twigs, and an ant
Here’s a cemetery angel with what appears to be three twigs growing out of her face. There’s a huge ant crawling up her arm but it was the whole chin-twig situation that caused me to make the photo.
And also why do you suppose that angel wings are always depicted in sort of a partially-open pose, like a bird that’s just landed and hasn’t had time to fold away its wings? (Oh, yes: that is actually a thing I wasted some time thinking about. It’s stuff like this that clutters up my mind and distracts me from thinking about things that are important and/or have actual answers.)
Old City Cemetery
Caldwell, Texas
photographed 6.13.2024
One Day | One Image 