Maria and her children – Heber, Lynette, and Elizabeth –died against an elderly elm tree. Road-side darkened bark and melted asphalt suggest an inferno.It was Christmas Eve.
Employees of the McDonald’s in the next townput a sign on the tree, giving names and dates. In the yearssince the accident, Maria’s birth year has been amendedand she’s now two years younger. A scrawled message from JR and JJstates WE LOVE YOU. The once-red sign has faded to a golden color.Items around the tree have vestiges of holidays: three candy caneornaments, plastic fir fronds stuck in roadside tumbleweeds.
Above the sign a heart-shaped wreath, decorated with plastic rosesand daisies, has been nailed to the tree.
This link goes to my current project of digitally manipulated images.
This link will take you to my new project for 2009 - a new black and white image every day of the year.
Artist's Statement
I was ten, maybe, or eleven the summer my family took a long vacation to Mexico, driving from the Texas Panhandle all the way to Acapulco.
Our bible for the trip was the Sanborn's guide, provided by the company that sold Mexican car insurance to Americans. The manual outlines, kilometer by kilometer, things to see, to avoid, to eat along the way. We read the guide religiously, never questioning its pronouncements, always following its recommendations.
So it must have been noted in the guide's goldenrod yellow pages that atop a hill in the arid northern region was a roadside shrine. And it must have mentioned a small amount of parking, and it must have encouraged a stop.
The shrine was inside a cave, big enough to hold three or four people, tall enough so they could stand up. The show of such overt faith took my breath away: votive candles in little ruby-colored holders, smoky ceilings, velvet kneelers, some virgins, bloody Jesus on a cross. Forrest Heights Methodist Church had not given me the impression that either religion or loss could be so colorful.
But something took root in my brain...where it took four more decades to sprout.
I have no other answer. I stop at roadside crosses. I photograph them, and let the message in each one reveal itself to me through images and words.
One of my earliest memories is of my parents staying up late to process slides in the kitchen. I can still remember the first photograph I took - of a rock, with a mountain in the background. In college, I was almost positive I was going to be the next Ansel Adams.
All of which has led me here.
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