no space to breathe. mountain rise cemetery, janua...

no space to breathe. mountain rise cemetery, january 2008 pietermaritzburg kwazulu-natal south africa. a daughter tends the grave of her mother, they have only a simple wooden cross and a grave number with which to mark her mother's resting place. i have put this series of images together against the backdrop of living a city that seems to be dying all around me. something must be wrong when so many people are dead and buried, so close, so fast and so often. while i walked among the graves making these images i asked questions of family members; what happened? why are these people are dying? i was told that he were just old (thank god) others, well they were sick, or stabbed with a knife, she just died, and, well you know my friend these things just happen now. what ever the medical details might be in each case, i do know that many many people are dying and that mountain rise cemetery is often the place where the remains are interned. i walked around mountain rise cemetery with a camera noting down how the earth is dug up and the remains of loved ones are buried and how nature claims back the land as if it was never given out. if the simple wooden cross is not replaced by a solid stone marker in a year or so nothing remains of the grave bar a small cement brick with a grave number cast in it. i found the families of the departed open to me being there noting the state of the graves, whether they were in the process of burying or returning to the site to tend the grave of their mother. i stopped and talked to a young guy who had come to prepare a grave for his brother's daughter funeral and the title of this essay was handed to me on a plate, he spoke about how the ancestors were once buried next to the home and it was easy to communicate with the departed, there was plenty of space and the grave could be prepared in the proper manner, but with the situation in the townships there is no space to do this and so the municipal cemetery will have to do. i asked him where he wanted to be buried some day and he laughed and said not here, there is no space to breathe... i chose just look at the cemetery as a whole, the fresh graves, a funeral or two, the state of the settling soil, the grass cutters on behalf of the council and the individual tending of the graves, even the vendors who sell ice cream on the weekends and make up to 200 rand a day.