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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Ninety-two: Cruising the Inland Passage from Charleston to Jacksonville > Landmarks in time, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina, 2014ie
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22-NOV-2014

Landmarks in time, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina, 2014ie

I had already photographed this church and its historic graveyard during my 2013 visit to Charleston. http://www.pbase.com/pnd1/image/152095149) I decided to go back to it once more during this very brief 2014 visit. This time, the graveyard incongruously proved busier than usual. A wedding event seemed in the offing – clusters of tuxes echoing joyful banter, oblivious to the ranks of tombstones behind them. My vantage point for this image best tells the story. I fill three quarters of my frame with the graveyard and leave only a quarter of the frame for the living. A wedding may well represent a significant stage in the life cycle. However, this image infers that weddings are but a small landmark in time, when compared to eternity itself.

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Phil Douglis18-Mar-2015 20:22
Thanks, Iris, for coming to this image. I fully intended it to be not only thought provoking, but unsettling as well. We begin to die as soon as we are born. We move through various stages of life until it ends. A marriage celebration is one of those stages. It is not by accident that wedding rituals often include a vow that ends "until death do us part."
Iris Maybloom (irislm)16-Mar-2015 21:27
The incongruity of this image is startling. Clearly these wedding goers are not filled with a sense of foreboding given the setting for these nuptials. In fact, they seem oblivious to the presence of death that's very much in the foreground of this life-affirming event. Although I understand the philosophical issues of life and death that emanate from this image, I, nevertheless, find it very unsettling. This is a great thought provoker, Phil.
Phil Douglis04-Jan-2015 03:32
"The black fence in the background corrals the living and the dead." What an appropriate observation on this image, Rose. When I was making this image, I was thinking of the contrasts between the living and the dead, while overlooking the equally compelling placement of that fence, which says, in essence, that life and death is a balancing act, and the outcome is always the same...
sunlightpix02-Jan-2015 22:53
Joyous banter combined with the silent tombstones-eerie and compelling! The black fence in the background corrals the living and the dead. V
Phil Douglis02-Jan-2015 21:02
Thanks so much for commenting on this image, Carol. You are right -- the random groupings of wedding participants contrast strongly to the rigidly placed graves, arranged, as you note, "orderly and silent." Life itself is random, unpredictable, and transient, while death is portrayed here as eternally fixed.
Carol E Sandgren02-Jan-2015 17:48
a feeling of contrast is what I get from this image. I didn't realize at first that those people among the living are there for a wedding event, one event that is the opposite in emotion from a funeral. Yes, this does represent at least a part of the circle of our lives. I like how the people are grouped tightly together in a more random pattern than the gravestones which are orderly and silent. Such contrast!
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