Remember me

Someone was here. Many someones.
Duvernay, QC
August 2017
This photo originally shared on Instagram

When you visit a Jewish grave, it's customary to leave a stone on top of the headstone as a sign that you were there, that you honoured the memory of the departed. It's considered a good deed, a mitzvah, and I never enter a cemetery without first choosing a few proper stones and slipping them into my pocket.

My father and mother-in-law are buried here. The Duvernay Cemetery, as it's commonly known, is located in a largely rural, agricultural area in eastern Laval that still hasn't been touched by the relentless creep of urbanization. We visit this place every time we make the trek back to Montreal, and every time I bring a camera.

I shoot in cemeteries because in my world, photography has always been about preserving moments, about remembering. And if a graveyard is meant to stoke memory and reflection, then somehow it feels right to remember the moments here in pixels. I'm not entirely certain it's considered acceptable to pull out a DSLR amid a collection of graves, but I find a camera in my hand helps me make sense of a place that hasn't always made sense in the history of my family.

About eight years before I took this photo, just over a month before he died, I took my dad to a couple of cemeteries in midtown Montreal so he could show me where other members of our family were buried. I carefully recorded the day through my lens, even as the light drizzle intensified, even as he chit-chatted with the caretaker. Because he never missed an opportunity to connect with a stranger, even if it meant we got a little soaked in the process.

There was no rain the day I captured this scene. But as I composed the shot just a few metres from where he was buried, I couldn't help but think that he'd probably find my inveterate photography somewhat amusing. And he'd probably have hung around for the caretaker, too.

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