_seasons of life
Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery is an oasis of calm in this otherwise frenetic city. I initially visited the cemetery to photograph the golden tones of autumn 2017 and have since been continually drawn back to its serenity. Inspired by Paris’ famed Père Lachaise Cemetery, Green-Wood was founded in 1838 and quickly became a destination for both the living and the dead. The grounds are currently home to over 600,000 graves set amongst a sweeping 478 acres of rolling hills (including the highest point in Brooklyn), paths and ponds. 7,000 trees, many of them older than the cemetery itself, give shelter to birds and other wildlife. Whether walking, painting, birding or otherwise lounging in the green-spaces, the living also find solace under the boughs and along the wending pathways.
Watching the seasons pass at Green-Wood is the realization that within death, this necropolis is a place of life. In pastel tones spring arrives, life anew emerging from the skeletal frames of magnolia and cherry trees. With summer, a euphony of birdsong carries through dense leaves and across the luscious landscape, life in all its vibrancy. Fall’s explosion of color indicates maturity and the strange contrast of aging beauty. And, with the advance of winter snows, the nakedness and silence of the season is merely a prelude to the resumption of life anew.
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