Photography Proposal - Graves/Graveyards

Mark Collie once wrote “You can outrun the Devil if you try, but you will never outrun the hands of time.” This to me has always been a very strong statement. I see it as quite possibly the most apt declaration about life. It calls to mind the one true connection everybody on this earth has and that is the awaiting embrace of death. Death has always interested me but more precisely graves and graveyards have interested me, the final resting places of people who have passed.

Death is a mystery, what lies beyond, is there a heaven or is there just nothing? Yet final resting places are not. Some people have very unassuming markers while some have lavish and exaggerated monuments.

With my project I propose to capture these final resting places, from the simple and modest graves to the more prolific and overstated. I propose to show the contrast of one persons’ final resting place to another, including the older graves which have become worn over time to the newer more crisp forms. I would like to show how as time passes graves become more beaten and old looking because as the time passes the family members of those who have already gone begin to pass themselves and how graves stand unvisited and untreated with no flowers on them while others are covered in flowers and sometimes gifts. Also I would like to try and show an understanding as to why people come miles around sometimes other countries to visit certain graves such as those of Michael Collins or Phil Lynott.

I would also like this project to capture the haunting aspects many feel when in a graveyard. I aim to capture the stillness, quietness and the somewhat otherworldly feeling that can overcome a person while walking the aisles between graves (perhaps maybe catch a spirit on camera). The project will hopefully try and show an understanding of the idea behind our final resting places. Why is it that we choose to be buried and why do some choose to be cremated and is there a universal fear of death?

The project has a start date of October 13^th 2013 with a proposed final date of March 14^th 2014. For it I will be using a Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. To accomplish my project I will be visiting many graveyards across Dublin at varying times of the day, the reason for this is that I believe that the lighting will be a major factor in obtaining the images I want. I will be photographing a wide variety of graves, including some of famous people, and to this I will certainly need to communicate with those who operate the site. I also intend to gather pictures of people who are visiting a grave, although this may be a little bit more difficult so I may make it easier by using friends and family members as my subjects as this would be more appropriate.

Finally when my project is complete I then plan to publish the best images I have gathered and publish them in a book and also plan to show them in an exhibition. My aim will be to show the frailty of life, the waiting hands of death and what becomes of our names when we finally do pass. It will not be a bleak outlook but rather it will ideally just make people stop, think and perhaps realise how precious life is and perhaps make them remember what is good in their lives. My aim is also to maybe make people think twice when they are passing a grave and perhaps think about what kind of person they were.