22 Rest Here
February 2025 - ongoing22 Rest Here is a photographic project documenting a selection of cemeteries and graveyards in the United States. In observing subcultural traditions of cemeteries, patterns of ritual reveal ways society maintains memory and legacy.
This project was originally meant to document care and neglect in cemeteries of Nebraska as an exploration of legacy and posthumous regard. While finding damage within a cemetery isn’t a rarity, the repairs, if any, are always the point of interest. Research into the care and upkeep of cemeteries, environmental factors, laws and regulations informed the commonality and severity of damage, while the methods of repair gave context to the status of many of the headstones I observed.
Ten months into the project, the loss of a family member stalled the project. Grief is never gone, but another ten months passed, and the work evolved into an observation of both community grief and my own.
Now, the project observes traditions that have become rituals of death, with some practices regionally accepted while others are specific to small towns. In remembering those who have gone before us and honoring their wishes in death, we maintain a relationship with the ones we’ve lost that transcends the boundary between this realm and that of the deceased. Cemeteries still take damage and undergo repair, there is neglect and care, a cycle of visitors, and an undeniable transition, even if the process takes decades or centuries. In short, cemeteries develop in much the same progression that societies and individuals do.
22 Rest Here attempts to present an aspect of these progressions within the scope of American cemeteries through photography.
