Online entries for CAFA+ Uncertainty are open October 5 – October 18, 2024. Click here for more information about the virtual exhibition.
Jane Hopkins
Stroll through 300 years of cemetery history with me; experience the landscapes and markers representing the hopes and dreams of the generations buried there.
As a meeting ground of the living and the dead, some burial grounds are located in the center of the community, where families and friends can participate actively in visiting and caring for the graves. Others—often the garden cemeteries of the 1800s—function more as outdoor art museums and landscaped parks, where people can stroll among the statues and feel a sense of peace or experience the mystery of death. Early cemeteries of our settlers are fascinating places where genealogists and historians study firsthand the history of our country.
To my surprise I’ve found that cemeteries intrigue people of all ages. When I arrive at a cemetery my focus is first on the landscape, then on the art of stone carving and finally on the sense of grief and loss so beautifully portrayed by the epitaphs and statuary.
I’ve now traveled to over 200 cemeteries and have recently published a book entitled “Cemetery Reflections” that pairs my photographs with the poetry and prose of grief and death.
My husband and I live on the shore of Lake Ontario in Webster, NY. I received my photographic training at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC and Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. I have exhibited and sold my work in the Rochester area for the past twenty years.