Throughout the studying and photographing of Cave Hill Cemetery in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, I realized that the graves within this legendary cemetery were the closest thing for the dead to still remain alive for those who would come and visit. Cave Hill is known for the prestigious and life-like statues and memorials for those buried there. When visiting this national landmark in my hometown, I realized that capturing the photos of those almost “living” statues made the dead feel alive. Seeing the faces, pictures, and house-like structures for these graves made me think those buried were waiting to be let out and just needed someone to show others that they’re still alive. With this in mind, capturing the most eloquent statues and adding a life-like movement, such as glitches, to these photographs allows for the audience to feel as though the dead are moving their own picture that was captured of them. It adds a depth that the dead want to show the living that they’re very much alive, so to further this dimension I compiled all the glitched images into an Instagram page called “TheLivingCaveHillCemetery.”
Within this Instagram page, it is seen as if it is controlled by a single dead soul whose afterlife presence is controlling the narrations of the captions. As the audience is observing the main overview of the account on Instagram, there are exactly twenty photos, twenty signifying the date August 20th of 2008, the date where the cemetery was officially recognized and finished after all of the renovations and corrections. Though this cemetery was finished being built in 1913, I felt as though the exact date of when final renovations were completed was more significant for death within the digital realm, bettering the application of technological concepts. The profile picture is left blank, to add more anonymity and an eerie presence for the audience that keeps them wondering who really is narrating the stories on the page. This concept also works hand in hand with the idea of no title or “name” for the account. Usually for an Instagram account, a user creates an @ handle, as well as a name for the account on the side (people would normally put names within this space, where it is bolded and clearly shown who runs the account on the overview of the page). By adding the concept of no name, it emphasizes the anonymity concept even further. Underneath the description of the page, there is a link that directly brings the user to the Find A Grave website, a website that allows people to search for a buried loved one in specifically Cave Hill Cemetery. I added this to allow for people to really connect with those who are buried in this area, and further adds a living element to the dead who are “taking over” the page.
When scrolling through the feed of the page, every single post is a glitched black and white photograph accompanied by a caption that explains how the statue or grave is representing the rest of the afterlife presence within the cemetery. The black and white significance allows the user to focus on the graveyard/grave rather than the distracting colors surrounding it. As for the glitch, the randomized and almost lifelike touching of the photograph adds an element of life, as well as interaction with the dead person or “statue” being photographed. When originally taking the photographs, I wanted others to see my vision of the environment around me. As Susan Sontag writes in her book On Photography,
A photograph is not just the result of an encounter between an event and a photographer; picture-taking is an event within itself… While real people are out there killing themselves or other real people, the photographer stays behind the camera, creating a tiny element of another world: the image-world that bids to outlast us all (11).
With this said, by taking into consideration the lens of the photographer and the importance of their interpretation of the event occurring, a photograph will never die and will continuously live on. This was the intention of the glitching, to keep the life-like appearance “living on” and continuously haunting the photograph on a digital level. I programmed a line of code to generate any picture inputted into a glitched piece of art, considering the thousands of different combinations that glitching effects can add.
The captions that are narrated with each post explain the situation of where the statues are placed and what the context or action they are displaying is. In addition, the location of every single post is the same: Cave Hill Cemetery & Arboretum. The captions contain first person descriptions, as well as always end with the word “here,” emphasizing the location that is posted with the post as well. Having the simultaneous addition of the location and the captions seeming as though they’re being narrated right from Cave Hill allows the audience to feel “haunted” by this dead soul right on their phone. Adding a dimension of place and linking it to the context of the post ties in the element of aura being constructed around one’s technological device they’re viewing Instagram on. As Zane Verdina writes in A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words: Storytelling with Instagram,
A photograph is fossilized light, and its aura of superior evidential efficacy… therefore provides a way proclaim success and to preserve them. For each individual these are “good moments” which are transformed into “good memories” (33).
In this context, these photographs within this page “transform” the aura of a simple photo from a moment into a memory. With the caption, glitching effect, and location all combined into each post, this moment taken at this cemetery is instantly deepened into an experience, as the audience feels as though they’re reading a live caption update about the dead souls represented as statues, and emphasize that no matter how much time passes by, they will always be haunting and bring life to their photos of them as long as they’re buried at Cave Hill cemetery.
When the audience scrolls through each intimate caption, each one uses verbs such as “us,” “they,” and “he/she” in all but one post. There’s one post that pictures the top portion of a cross, as well as a small photograph attached for the girl who had passed. This post uses “my,” as in referring to herself in the first person. While the other posts were more narrations of what was happening in the afterlife community around her, I wanted to add an extra element with the post that I personally think haunts the feed the most. Pictured is a younger, beautiful girl named Stephanie, and by allowing the audience to put a name with a dead face and a grave further explains my entirety of the project and feeling connected and haunted with the movement of the dead. Because she is so young and the only post where users can see a human face, it feels as though she should still be alive and should be living her life with any other young adult on social media platforms. That’s why, in this case, I formed this particular post so users can imagine the face behind whose supposedly running this account. This particular element made me think of the article “Taken from Life: The Unsettling Art of Death Photography” by Bethan Bell. The main of the article identifies how in the Victorian ages, though kids and older relatives would pass away, in remembrance of them there would still be pictures with their dead body alongside the rest of the live family. This same idea is displayed with a high-quality picture of this dead young girl on a grave. It brings the same haunted aura to the viewer, realizing that this person is no longer with us, and there is all but a picture of her left on her grave above her dead body. Christian Metz also associates his article “Photography and Fetish” along the concepts of death staying alive within a simple screenshot. He writes,
Photography is linked with death in many different ways. The most immediate and explicit is the social practice of keeping photographs in memory of loved beings who are no longer alive… We appear to be changing through a photographic mirror overtime appearing ageless as we go, however those who are dead will always remain within the boundaries of this mirror for us to remember them by (Metz, 84).
This links in with the connection of death within my Instagram page and how every photograph is essentially a mirror that reflects the last image seen of this loved one, leaving a “glitched” mark on those who view it.
With all of this in mind, the idea of a haunted media page within the Cave Hill Cemetery adds depth and dimension within the realm of death photography. This concept allows for the user to feel as though the afterlife presence of the dead being is wanting them to see their lively movement, or glitching, while on this online page. It’s as though the soul is communicating to the main profile on this account, Stephanie, to narrate what event or scene is occurring within someone’s photo. This act of communicating between the digital dead and through the user behind the screen is an element that links death in the digital age to the physical dead themselves.
Works Cited
Bell, Bethan. “Taken from Life: The Unsettling Art of Death Photography.” BBC News, BBC, 5 June 2016, www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-36389581.
Metz, Christian. Photography and Fetish. MIT Press. Volume 34, https://www.jstor.org/stable/778490.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Penguin Books, 1977.
Verdina, Zane. “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: Storytelling with Instagram.” Universiteit Antwerpen, 2013.