Mementi Mori

 “Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.”
            -Hannah Arendt

Mementi Mori is a body of work that seeks to illumine the sublime within stories where sex meets murder.  These narratives are all set upon the everyday landscape of the United States.  The quotidian look of these representations belies the horrific events that have taken place at sites I visited from California to New York.

These photographs are of locations where biological men, sometimes boys, were murdered because they were gay or transgender. The murder victims were burned, stabbed repeatedly, shot within a classroom of teenagers, and/or bludgeoned.  In most cases, murder was preceded by consensual sex.
           
Viewers won’t find the bloody remains of violence or clues to who was murdered or why within these photographs. Human lives were forever ended upon ignominious, plain places.  Over the years, growth and developments have obscured any traces that once scarred the land. Even the infamous site of Matthew Shepard’s death at the foot of idyllic, snow-capped peaks is encircled by suburban sprawl.  Each site I visited was an unsettling disappointment, bearing few if any clues to the value of the life that ended there. 

Through these photographs I hope to mark out a path toward the inarticulateable qualities of the events, lives, and themes I’ve followed, but it is a path the falls short of its end. These photographs hint at the fleeting nature of life and call attention to the speed with which hate can bring about death and oblivion. At the same time I hope they affirm that the worth of a life cannot be fully memorialized.

I have taken the titles for these photographs from police reports, letters and statements from grieving parents, and news coverage.