A Fascination With Old Cemeteries

(c) Michael Borek

MEG member Michael Borek shares his fascination with old cemeteries and what he found on a recent trip to Buenos Aires. 

I am fascinated by old cemeteries, but I am scared of places that are overrun by tourists.  I am from Prague, Czech Republic, and I used to love to go to the old Jewish cemetery in downtown when it was still behind the Iron Curtain and hardly any visitors set foot there. However, that cemetery changed immensely after the fall of Communism and going there now feels like being at Times Square. Even though the scenery is still nice and pleasantly bizarre, it is impossible to enjoy it quietly with the never-ending stream of tourists.

When I was preparing for my trip to Buenos Aires, many people and guidebooks recommended visiting the Recoleta Cemetery. I usually don’t like to visit “must-see” and touristy places, so I was hesitant. I am glad that my curiosity prevailed. The cemetery covers 14 acres, and, if one steers clear of the tomb of Eva Peron and several other luminaries, the experience can be quite private. The whole necropolis feels like a city within city and there seem to be even little “neighborhoods” with their own atmospheres.  It is a true memento mori with grandiose tombs with beautiful Art Nouveau and Neogothic architecture in various stages of disrepair, interspersed with rotting flowers or always fresh plastic flowers, dust, spider webs, and condensation on the windows, rendering everything even more mysterious. 

(c) Michael Borek

In most of these pictures, I tried to capture the sense of transience I felt there. However, there is one photo that is quite different. I became fascinated by a photograph on a tomb of a woman who died in 2010. Next to her traditional black and white portrait that one would expect on a tomb, there is a color picture of her and what I suppose was her car, a Ford Edsel, taken in 1958. There is no question that the car is the most dominant part of the

(c) Michael Borek

picture. And in case some viewer did not understand what he was viewing, there is a caption under the photograph with the woman’s name and the model of her car. Even though this photograph is visually different than the rest of the pictures I took at this cemetery, it seem to complement the others with its postmodern suggestion that a person should be remembered by her beautiful car.