Grave Images

Cemeteries are the repositories of history and personal narrative, places of comfort and beauty. Beginning in 1994, photographer and installation artist Kathy T. Hettinga began a fourteen-year project to document an unknown body of funerary folk art displayed in the cemeteries of the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. The book begins with the author's story of death and loss as a young widow living in the San Luis Valley. Years later, the beauty of the valley was relentless in calling her back to document the places and the ways people honor those that have died. Grave Images recounts Hettinga's spiritual and artistic journey to find meaning in the cemeteries of rural and largely Hispanic communities of the San Luis Valley. Her photographs of unique grave markers made of wood, concrete, metal, sandstone, glass and other materials by individuals or families to commemorate the passing of loved ones capture the ethereal beauty of the cemeteries and serve as a touchstone for our common understanding of loss, grief, and the need to memorialize and pay tribute. Hettinga's illuminating narrative articulates the meaning of this visual record from the perspective of an artist and provides religious and historical perspectives on the San Luis Valley as final resting place. This book will appeal to artists, art historians, ethnographers, historians, scholars of religion and general audiences interested in photography, folk art, and the history of the San Luis Valley.