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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Forty-Eight: Telling stories with pictures > Remembrance, Gleeson, Arizona, 2009
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10-APR-2009

Remembrance, Gleeson, Arizona, 2009

Gleeson was once a copper mining town, flourishing from 1900 to 1939. For the last seventy years it has been a ghost town. A couple of ruined buildings and its old cemetery are all that is left of it. In that cemetery, I found the grave of Paul Christiansen. He was born in 1931 and died in 1938, just about the time that Gleeson itself died. His grave is strewn with remembrances, left, no doubt, by visitors who were moved by the death of a seven year old boy, buried on a windswept hill outside of a town that was no more. The most touching remembrance is a figure of an angel, wrapped in a blue scarf. It seems to be sleeping here as soundly as the boy it commemorates. The mid-day light is harsh, the colors raw and unforgiving. They seem appropriate for both the purpose and place.

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Phil Douglis16-Aug-2009 21:04
Color, Celia, is at the core of this image. As I mentioned to Vera, it would not have been as harsh in black and white, which would have made everything in the image blend together. Instead, color allows the bluish color of the stone to replicate the color of death itself. The golden grass and yellow flowers provide a setting of raw contrast. Life here was harsh, and the town died. This child died at seven, about the same time the town itself died. Today, the harsh primary colors -- red, blue, yellow -- surround the stone cold statue of an angel without wings, telling the story I want this picture to tell.
Cecilia Lim16-Aug-2009 19:08
I can't see the wings of the angel here, so it looks like a little boy, and in my mind, suggestive of the little boy who died. Its colour is blue and cold, and it lies lifeless above the grave in the hues of gold around him, making him look completely out of place, as is the grave of this poor boy who died in 1938.
Phil Douglis02-May-2009 21:22
You and I have seen the "dead children" effect many times on our travels. Wherever there lies the body of a child, there is almost always an outpouring of remembrance from people who are simply touched by a sense of early loss. For example, a few days after making this shot, we saw the grave of two year old Joseph Vietti in Congress, Arizona (http://www.pbase.com/image/111598307 ) He has been dead for 112 years, yet somebody has left a candle on his tomb. And remember the grave of eight year old Mary Ann Kempston in China Camp, California? She died 132 years ago, yet people cover her grave with dolls and teddy bears.(http://www.pbase.com/image/97667847 ) I don't think it is a coincidence that Gleeson, Congress, and China Camp are all ghost towns, places as dead as those who lie beneath these stones. Ghost towns attract visitors who are attuned to the past, and these graves are all the more fascinating because the towns in which these children lived have vanished as well --making the graves of these lost children seem all the more poignant.
Tim May02-May-2009 03:34
I find this so eerie - The stone really seems to be fairly modern - I don't believe it was placed in 1939 - and the fact that people still visit this grave and leave remembrances - especially in a place as remote as Gleeson.
Phil Douglis23-Apr-2009 17:44
You are right, Vera. In black and white or sepia, this image would take us back in time, and have a more romantic, spiritual quality to it. But that is not the story I am telling here. I am talking about the harsh reality of death, and the harsh reality of a mining town gone bust. So harsh colors work to tell that story for me. The color also provides a strong contrast between the pale gray figure of the angel and the vivid coloration of its surroundings. It would be interesting to compare the harshness of this shot to the nostaglic feeling in another one of my graveyard pictures, shot in the Congress ghost town cemetery a week later. ( Seehttp://www.pbase.com/pnd1/image/111598307 ) The lesson in this comparison of images is critically important to expressive photography: we should always select our medium of expression (color, black and white, sepia, etc.) based on the idea we are trying to express. Never choose the medium first, and the force the image into it. A lot of photographers do this because they fall in love with black and white or sepia for its own sake. In doing this, they risk losing the power of full color as an expressive agent, such as I try to do with this image.
Guest 22-Apr-2009 23:33
Now I think this is kinda creepy. If this were in black and white or sepia it would bring on another meaning wouldn't it. It would bring us back in time. In color it is less romantic. Harsh, as you say, perhaps like a copper mining town.
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