Yes it is, it really is. The upside though is that I’m sat in front of the PC screen working my way through two projects, with the occasional break for coffee, biscuits etc. The image above may feature in one of the projects. I’m putting together an e-book/print on demand book of Gothic inspired imagery. This image was taken in the St. James Gardens which lie in a former quarry immediately behind Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. The layout of the memorials always makes me think of an oddly grim chess set.
The quarry supplied the stone for many of the fine Georgian houses in the area and when worked out it was taken over to be a private cemetery. The back wall had ramps and blank tomb faces carved into it, the idea being that you bought or subscribed to one and would become your family’s last resting place, to be admired by friends and competitors alike, for even in death there would always be the element of display and self confidence. The graveyard is also the setting for the tomb of Richard Huskisson, a man made famous by his death on the official opening day of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway, he was struck by a locomotive while trying to talk to the then Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington, a man with whom he had crossed political swords on occasion. After a period of semi dereliction the cemetery became a public park and an intriguing one it is. I’m not a death obsessive but there is something about the Victorian attitude that death wasn’t something you could shie away from, it was part of the everyday world about them. To today’s sensibilities weeping angels and miniaturized Venetian palazzos may be self indulgent but they were of their time and should not be judges too harshly.
Of course they are a stimulating area for the photographer, the hidden messages of the styles, a broken off pillar betokens a life of promise cut short etc. and they lend themselves to the timelessness of black+white photography.
Well that’s one project, the second is the reformatting of one of my existing e-books into print on demand format. Again they are B+W images, this time of five UK cities. It’s all a learning curve, a polite way of saying that I have occasionally shouted at the screen as the page layout takes on a mind of it’s own but I’m getting there. Coffee & biscuits time again.
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