![]() ![]() “Sometimes it’s hard to get the shot I want and still be mindful of the sensibilities,” he says, adding that he’s passed on some shots that he would have otherwise taken. ![]() Those restrictions can put off-limits certain spots that might enable his cameras to capture a great scene. It’s a daunting challenge, and not just because of the vast acreage to explore he must take care to follow rules and not tramp on any of the 98,000 graves or touch the often-fragile tombstones. Now few people rival his intimacy with these 174 acres, which he prowls at all hours, hunting for compelling sights and sounds. Mount Auburn hopes to be able to appoint future resident artists, she says.īefore the project, Mighty’s only visit to the cemetery had been for an acquaintance’s funeral many years ago. Thanks to a grant, the cemetery was able to create “an opportunity to have an artist participate in our project to study the cemetery’s most significant monuments,” she says, documenting this old history using new media. As for Mount Auburn, “We are thrilled,” says Jenny Gilbert, the cemetery’s senior gifts officer. Mighty says he is humbled by his unique residency. Plaques on the obelisks guarding Mount Auburn’s entrance proclaim it “a memorial to the dead and a place of inspiration for the living.” The cemetery attracts more than 200,000 visitors each year. At its consecration, it was the first cemetery in the country with a landscaped garden, a departure from the starkness of the traditional church graveyards. He also wants to showcase the beauty of an iconic place that was designed to blunt death’s sorrow. Other notables interred here include sports broadcaster Curt Gowdy, politician Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy.Īn early video inkling of the project on his website attests that Mighty aims to capture more than the sad stories of Mount Auburn. Candidates include Julia Ward Howe, who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Malamud, the author of The Natural, Dorothea Dix, the 19th-century mental health care reformer, George Angell, founder of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Peter Byus, a Virginia slave who escaped to Boston and whose tombstone depicts a man bursting out of chains, and Harriet Jacobs, another escaped slave, who wrote one of the first accounts of the brutal existence of female slaves. ![]() To be displayed in Mount Auburn’s visitors center, it will cover the iconography and physical environment of the cemetery, along with the stories of perhaps 15 people, famous and not, buried here during the last two centuries. Mighty’s appointment, lasting through next year, will produce a multimedia project of video and film, still photography, music, and other audio. (Neither officials at Mount Auburn, nor at the American Institute of Commemorative Art, nor at two other prominent burial grounds- Arlington National Cemetery and Boston’s Forest Hills Cemetery-know of any other cemetery artist-in-residence, which appears to be a universally novel concept Britain appointed its first one only last year.) Mighty remains above ground, and he is apparently the only officially designated artist-in-residence at an American cemetery. There are many artists in residence at Mount Auburn painter Winslow Homer, poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Amy Lowell, and novelist Bernard Malamud are among those buried here. “I just find it heartbreaking,” he says of the piece, one of many children’s gravestones and markers sprinkled throughout Mount Auburn that serve as grim witness to the rampant childhood mortality in the decades following the cemetery’s 1831 opening. Sweat spangles on Mighty’s face in the sunlight of this warm day, but no mind: the memorial in Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery has become a magnet for him and his lens (this is his third visit to the spot in recent months). Roberto Mighty positions his video camera at the crest of a small knoll, perhaps 10 paces from Frank Ernest James’ memorial-this boy is stone, not flesh and bone-and takes some footage, then halves the distance between himself and the statue for a closer shot, finally homing in from practically on top of the figure, his camera’s gaze lingering. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.The tiny boy kneels, chin on chest, clutching a book. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it. ![]()
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