Life, Death and the Photography in Between

Today's topic is death, which I suppose is appropriate, since we visited Pere-Lachaise. It was, hands down, the most beautiful cemetery I've ever been in.
 On the topic of my own photography today, I'll just say that my take on it was all about the architecture and the beautiful details in the graves and crypts.
That take can also be transferred to the concept of life and death. If the living give so much to the dead, do they ever really die? If complete strangers come to gawk at the art that is their grave, doesn't a part of them, or at least their family, still live? And another thing, do the dead expect such things from the living, or do the living expect it from the dead-- to be so great that something that magnificent is deserved? Or do the living expect it from the living, knowing that when their time comes, they want to spend eternity becoming dust in the universe in style? Maybe it's a way for the living to make sure they don't forget and aren't forgotten themselves.
On that train of thought, photography is a surefire way to make sure that that doesn't happen. Really, what is a photograph but a memory that escapes your mind and becomes part of the physical world that can be touched and seen by others? Photographing anything, a birth, a baby's "firsts," a graduation, a wedding, a death, a funeral, even, and all of the billions of moments in between, become another way of making a monument for the dead. That's really all I have to say on the subject. Death, as it turns out, is not my thing. I'd rather shoot all of the life that precedes it, and the life it creates in architecture and in art.







Check out more pictures of the cemetery and Jasmin's and my reinvention of the Eiffel tower on Flickr!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_elizabeth1/sets/72157632247110489/