Photography Atelier

They Existed

This project arose out of my lifelong interest in the visual language of death, having grown up around colonial New England cemeteries and the powerful imagery carved on gravestones. These markers commemorate people who died centuries ago, some of whom had brutally short lives, counted in months, or even days, on their tombstones. As the epitaph on a gravestone in Concord reminds us, in colonial Massachusetts, “life [was] of few days and full of trouble.” These stones are poignant reminders of meaningful lives lived, however briefly. I photograph them as a way of honoring those lives and remembering, even in a small way, the people who lived them.

Nowhere is this captured better than in Maya Angelou’s poem, “When Great Trees Fall,” excerpts of which have been incorporated into these images.

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence, their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,

promised walks never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

© Caged Bird Legacy, LLC, used with permission

Carole LoConte Tedesco is a Massachusetts native and an estate planning attorney. Born in Boston and raised in Marshfield, Massachusetts, Tedesco was educated at Barnard College of Columbia University and Boston College Law School. She has long sought a way to combine her professional experience in death planning and her lifelong interest in the visual language of death. This is her first foray into the world of art photography after years of daily photography practice on Instagram.