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Started during the pandemic (as did so many things,) when I was fortunate enough to be hired by the Wood County Museum to help the curator maintain and update the exhibits and help maintenance with the upkeep of the historic building(s). At the time, the museum was closed to the public which afforded me the opportunity to photograph the buildings and grounds un-impeded by anyone other than museum staff. It was during this period that I started the project of creating a photographic portrait of each one of the headstones standing in the cemetery.

The idea was to treat each headstone as a person and try to find a sense of character and purpose for each “numbered stone.” It was also an artistic challenge for myself in trying to come up with unique compositions for each and every headstone, which essentially, are all similar repeating white rectangles stuck in the ground.

It was also an attempt to document a neglected and relatively obscure part of the American landscape. In neglecting such histories we risk forgetting the individuals who helped to create and mould who we are today. The histories of the poor and disenfranchised are just as important as those of the wealthy and powerful, if not even more so. A society is remembered for how it treats its people, not in how it treats its rulers.