Grave Matters
Mark C. TaylorThis text presents a meditation on death and the significance of gravesites and memorials for contemporary society. It includes photographs of the graves of 160 modern artists, writers, philosophers and musicians.
‘Cemeteries’, writes Mark C. Taylor, ‘are where I go to commune with “my” ghosts. The journey to the cemetery is always solitary even when I am with people who are closest to me. In the graveyard, the we is dispersed and the I stripped bare.’ In Grave Matters, Taylor’s ghosts become our own. His thoughtful, poignant essay interweaves personal narrative, historical analysis, cultural commentary and philosophical reflection.
Dietrich Christian Lammerts’ photographs show us the graves of the artists, architects, writers, philosophers and musicians who shaped Western culture; at once beautiful and disturbing, they suggest an alternative history of modernism and its precursors. Grave Matters raises difficult questions: What place do the modern greats have in the postmodern age? Who decided where and how they would be buried? Who wrote their epitaphs? What do their deaths, and their graves, tell us about their lives and suggest about our own? The words and images of Grave Matters inscribe the future that we all face, and to ponder this memento mori is to meet life anew.
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Grave Matters is above all an impressive collection of evocative black and white photograph . . . the quality and variety of the photographs ensure that Grave Matters will make an ideal coffee-table book, particularly if you like your coffee black.
'The Art Newspaper
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The concept behind this book . . . clearly originated from the highest, most serious motives . . . Grave Matters is a wonderful book and Im glad it exists.
'TATE
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It is a deeply personal book comprised of a haunting essay by Taylor and a series of black and white photographs by Lammerts . . . it makes an eerie area of interest immediately accessible and combats the popular perception of graves as merely scary and morose. As an object, the book is well conceived and carefully composed.
'Contemporary magazine
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. . . ask me again in 50 years. Id still recommend reading his thoughts on the subject [of graves].
'Missoula Independent
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Mark C. Taylor, the books conceiver, approaches his theme insightfully and eloquently in this essay. This sectioned piece begins and ends with autobiographical material, and is especially powerful when dealing with the deaths of two of his siblings.
'Rain Taxi journal
Mark C. Taylor is the Cluett Professor of Humanities at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.