THE WAITING ROOM

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I’VE NEVER BEEN THE SORT OF PERSON to derive peace or comfort from most inherited cultural rituals, especially the formalized etiquette we have constructed around death. The trappings of mortuaries and cemeteries offer me no connection with people I have personally have lost over the years; I experience the vibe of such sites distantly, more like an anthropologist might wonder at the rites  of a vanished culture that he’d stumbled upon in his studies. And that means that photographing the symbols and structures of such place is purely an appreciation of design, producing no pangs of emotion. I’m just making pictures of things that strike me strange.

Walking into a cemetery, for a photographer especially, means encountering strange juxtapositions. There are the fixed objects that never change, i.e., the headstones and statuary, and then there are the temporary signs that speak to the fleeting feelings of the living, items that briefly intersect with the permanent fixtures; the flowers, messages and other improvised memorials that eventually will be cleared away by the groundskeepers (as will we all) .

Most can be readily understood. And then there is the occasional mystery.

Like a mylar balloon tethered to a stone angel.

Most motives in graveyards are readily decipherable, but I will likely never know what the number 5 shown here means. It is the most private of messages, and a strange mix of the bouncing of the breeze-blown balloon with the fixed, stiff pose of the Comforter. Regardless of whether it’s been 5 years since someone left, or whether they were merely 5 when they were taken, or…or….?, the picture I snapped out of curiosity is a frozen puzzle, appropriate in a space where all things are now frozen. Suspended. Interrupted.

The fact that I explore narrative clues among the graves of strangers is odd, given that I don’t visit the graves of people I actually knew. I may be trying to find some bond between the loss of others and my own, but I don’t think that’s it. I believe it’s just that I love pictures, especially the odd ones, the ones that defy explanation. Visual art is all about dealing with questions, after all; the running box score of what we learn, or don’t learn, from these random instants that we’ve yanked out of time. Sometimes, just having successfully stolen that odd, singular thing from eternity is enough. Sometimes, it does a number on you.