JPG: Stories: Photo Essay: Kouroi

Kouroi

By Max Cooper

25 Feb 2008

I am fortunate to live near the intersection of two major interstate highways, I-40 and I-26. I travel these roads daily, as well as smaller state highways here in western North Carolina, and I'm struck by the frequency of memorials and monuments left on the roadside.

Like artifacts, these memorials are left as evidence of a great stirring of human emotion. They are the Kouroi of modern times, in this nation descended from the Greeks. Very often they take the shape of the cross, but sometimes they're simply fresh flowers left at the roadside.

I began photographing these memorials in an effort to understand why someone would mark the place of a loved one's death. Isn't there a grave to mark as well? Or, perhaps, a store-bought marker in a cemetery seems inadequate, impersonal. Another common sight on these highways is the roadside headstone sellers; we buy our gravestones pre-fabricated, but our roadside memorials are handmade.

Perhaps these artifacts are meant as a simple warning to others: "Someone perished here."

I have also collected pictures of larger monuments with more overt religious meanings. How do these relate to the smaller crosses? More importantly, how do they relate to passersby? And what message does the monolithic cross say to me, as I pass by, pushing the speed limit?

The humanistic canon is filled with monuments and memorials. Will our children study these, as we study the Kouroi? Will it matter that our headstones are pre-made, and bought at a discount from roadside stands, instead of carved by Greek artisans or made on a loved-one's workbench? And what should we learn from these markers of loss and meaning, scattered in our paths? What do they say to us?