Walk By

 From my "As It Is,  -in Black & White" Collection

On Memorial Day, 2010, I made this image while walking around Cabbage Town and Oakland Cemetery in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. My family (Suttles) have a plot in Oakland with ancestors from the 1800s. My grandmother, Victoria Parks Suttles, was the last to rest there in 1987. The plot is now full. She was born in Atlanta in the year 1900. I loved listening to her stories of Atlanta in those days; days of horses on downtown, oiled, dirt streets, and taking the train to spend the summer with family friends, The Argyles, on The "Argyle Estate" (now Cumberland Mall; only 20 miles away from downtown).

"Walk By" is from Oakland Cemetery, but it is not a picture of my family's monuments. I wonder how many years have common little weeds faithfully burst out of the earth amongst the testimonial stoneworks each Memorial Day? Each year is different and yet the same.