Manor Park Cemetery on a week day afternoon in March. Impressions: Quiet, peaceful and yet full of visitors. The stone of a 17 year old next to a 91 year old. A sea of headstones, a sea of memories. People missed and lost and remembered. Many stones are ruptured – cracked, peeping clumps of grass, nettles, …
Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park on a week day lunchtime in March. Impressions: Oscillating between bitter cold and picnic worthy sunshine, blow your ears off wind and stillness. Every variety of daffodil, pale yellow, lemony, duck beak yellow, orangey, sturdy heads bobbing. Untamed wild space, nettles, thistles, thick white blossom, lush green, moss, ivy, holly. Old gravestones bearing …
Bunhill Fields Burial Ground on a week day morning in February. Impressions: Black railings, green railings, brown railings with gold peaks. Twigs strewn from storm Doris. Grave stones like rows of green teeth telling tales from history. Mobile phone and camera wielding photographers poking our lenses through the railings. Alive with spring flowers, crocuses, cowslips, a heart …
East London Cemetery on a weekday morning in October. Impressions: Raining Autumn leaves, leaf blowing, pots and pots of fake flowers, newly planted trees, old trees, rose bushes, chapels. Hundreds of names and stories and stones, hundreds of sadnesses, love, shock, relief, fractured families, private and public histories. Deflated balloons from remembered birthdays, oranges, incense, …