"Closed Forever" Uframed #2-10

Title: Closed Forever 

Location: New Orleans, LA 

Year: 2025 

Print: 12x18 color digital inkjet print on Hahnemühle Agave watercolour paper 

Edition: 10 

Retail: $850 framed print #1 of 10, $650 unframed prints 2-10 

Notes: When I last went to New Orleans, I took a tour of the city’s most famous cemetery, St. Louis #1. Most graves in New Orleans are above ground due to the very high water table— coffins would float to the surface if simply buried in the ground. In fact, my friend Jimmy Bower took me to a pauper’s cemetery in the city for people who can’t afford fancy above-ground mausoleums, and it’s very easy to find human bones laying around on the ground there. All the graves in St. Louis #1 are above ground, but most of them have many, many family members buried in a single tomb. After a body has been in a tomb for a year and a day, the tomb is reopened and whats left of the person is pushed to the bottom to make room for new burials. When can’t they fit anymore corpses in there, the tomb is sealed permanently. The culture of New Orleans treats death a little differently than most places in America— a jazz funereal in the Big Easy is equal parts mourning and celebration. The lichen and tiny ferns growing on this full tomb reminded me that everywhere there is death, there is new life as well.