Allegra

After a week of working my site, the Cimiterio degli Inglese, I have become very familiar with the location yet I still have many questions about its history and place today as a "monument of Florence" (what the sign next to the visitor log claims). I became very interested in who visits the cemetery: tourists who seek it out, tourists who stumble upon it, locals who visit it or those who drive by it on their commute. The location seemed to play an important part in visiting as it is outside of the main city center and surrounded by a major intersection. Also, I was attracted to the different styles of graves and how they are packed in so tightly. I counted all the graves and divided them into categories based on their general shape. Counting was frustrating because of all the cemetery rules about where one can walk and also the sheer number of graves--I counted over 350. Of the different style of graves, I am most intrigued by the crosses because of the variety of everything from a simple rectangular form to ornately detailed and decorated ones. The different styles of graves raised a lot of questions for me about who was buried there, periods of popularity with the different styles, various degrees of piety or affiliations, and also my frustration with all the unknowns I have of the cemetery.
In creating my subjective image I would like to explore what is unknown and difficult for me to access about the cemetery as well as what I find overwhelming and attractive. I have begun working with layered images of the graves and views looking in from the outside.