Gauadalupe Cemetery
Light Leaks & Wooden Crosses - Guadalupe Cemetery. Tempe, AZ. 2017
In February of 2017, I visited Guadalupe Cemetery with my college photography class, each of us handed a plastic Holga camera and a single roll of medium format film. The assignment: to witness how a camera can shift our perception of a place. What I didn’t expect was how deeply this place would shift me.
Unlike the manicured cemeteries I grew up seeing, Guadalupe is something else entirely- handmade, colorful, alive. Graves are marked not by towering marble, but by wooden crosses and offerings left by loving hands: ribbons, photos, trinkets, flowers. It was warm that day, a light breeze moving through sunlit silence. We wandered apart, camera straps over our shoulders, reverent and curious.
My photos came back streaked with light leaks, a Holga’s signature flaw- or gift. The imperfections mirrored the beauty of the place itself: unpolished, personal, glowing in its own quiet way.
