Vintage All Saints Day photos in New Orleans: Showcasing our tradition of honoring our dead
By on November 01, 2015
Phillip Harris knelt besides a small headstone, grasping a plastic scrub brush in his hands as he leaned on the marker for balance. The marker might have been white once, but age had grayed it, notwithstanding the annual cleansing Harris sought to provide.
It's a single photo among hundreds capturing the annual pilgrimage New Orleanians make to the city's cemeteries each year on Nov. 1 — All Saints Day. They come to contemplate, to grieve and to carefully pull a few weeds that have popped up between cracks in the pavement.
The simplicity, the solemnity and the clarity of Harris' task was captured by Bryan S. Berteaux, a photographer for The Times-Picayune. The exact date of when the photo was taken was not noted in our archive, but it was most likely in 1988. The vast majority of photos in the newspaper's archive are organized, carefully dated, captioned and slipped into alphabetized folders, lined up like soldiers within stacks and stacks of shelves. There are others, however, shuffled in and hidden among the neatly placed pictures, without names or bylines to identify them.
In 1988, Berteaux captured another moment in Holt Cemetery. Sherley Alexander bends carefully over a tombstone, one hand arranging small vases of greenery balanced precariously on the gravel tomb of her husband. The other hand embraces her grandson, Matthew Austin, then 2 years old, as he watches -- and learns.
Click here to access some great pictures: http://www.nola.com/haunted/index.ssf/2015/11/all_saints_day_vintage_photos.html#incart_river
It's a single photo among hundreds capturing the annual pilgrimage New Orleanians make to the city's cemeteries each year on Nov. 1 — All Saints Day. They come to contemplate, to grieve and to carefully pull a few weeds that have popped up between cracks in the pavement.
The simplicity, the solemnity and the clarity of Harris' task was captured by Bryan S. Berteaux, a photographer for The Times-Picayune. The exact date of when the photo was taken was not noted in our archive, but it was most likely in 1988. The vast majority of photos in the newspaper's archive are organized, carefully dated, captioned and slipped into alphabetized folders, lined up like soldiers within stacks and stacks of shelves. There are others, however, shuffled in and hidden among the neatly placed pictures, without names or bylines to identify them.
In examining the collection of these images from The Times-Picayune's archives, the undated Harris' portrait represents something larger about the photos. In a way, the date it was taken isn't relevant to its beauty.
In New Orleans, the tradition of honoring our dead on All Saints Day hardly seems to change from year to year.
In New Orleans, with its cemeteries that stand like solemn walled cities within a city, the tradition of honoring our dead on All Saints Day hardly seems to change from year to year. The fashions may shift, from subtle Mary Janes to platform shoes, from cat-eye glasses to digital watches, but each person's task remain the same: Honor our dead, and teach it to the next generation to do the same for us.In 1988, Berteaux captured another moment in Holt Cemetery. Sherley Alexander bends carefully over a tombstone, one hand arranging small vases of greenery balanced precariously on the gravel tomb of her husband. The other hand embraces her grandson, Matthew Austin, then 2 years old, as he watches -- and learns.
Click here to access some great pictures: http://www.nola.com/haunted/index.ssf/2015/11/all_saints_day_vintage_photos.html#incart_river
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