Graceland is perhaps the crown jewel of midwestern cemeteries, numbering among its tenants many of Chicago’s rich and famous, some of whom were commemorated by artists as well known as Lorado Taft and Louis Sullivan.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
But John Gary Brown, a photographer based in Lawrence, Kansas, has little interest in the famous, either as artists or subjects. His book Soul in the Stone: Cemetery Art From America’s Heartland focuses on the folk traditions of funerary art, celebrating an artistic pluralism that he claims is unique to the midwest. Brown’s black-and-white photos, taken in cemeteries throughout a ten-state region, reveal various ethnic traditions that were later shaped by the prevailing artistic influences and economic realities of the new land. The wrought-iron crosses popular in Bavaria and Austria, for example, find their U.S. counterpart in more affordable crosses wrought of plumbing pipe.
