A Grave Sculpture in New Orleans (from the series: Ars Longa Vita Brevis)
Most of the land in and around New Orleans is, famously, at sea level or below. It didn’t take long for the early French settlers to discover the disturbing truth; that the earth didn’t accommodate the dead well at all. Rather than resort to cremation, they chose to build crypts above ground to deal with the dead.
This image is of a weathered tomb surmounted by a statue of a grieving girl. There were sculptures of angels, as there often are in graveyards, but this was the sculpture that captured my attention. It is in the graveyard by the French quarter, where, I was reliably informed, a voodoo queen is buried. Even when New Orleans was flooded, these graves defied the water and kept their dead dry and undisturbed.
