Roadside Crosses
By Al Stiegman
29 August 2008
As a child I would sometimes, during the summer, travel with my father as he drove through the American South visiting the small towns where he had customers. I can remember hot, two-lane black top roads that ran almost straight through pine forests and cotton field past farms and hovels and country stores. I also remember seeing crosses erected by the side of the road, often gaudy with ribbons and flowers. I remember that my father told me that they meant that some had died at that very spot. I remember that I found it both sad and strange.
Years later when I returned to the South again to live I was surprised to find that the rural highways were not so different from the ones I remembered as a child. They were still, for the most part, two-lane black top and they ran through pines and farms. Also, the roadside crosses were still there. The new ones were often gaudy and tacky but still strangely sad while the older ones were faded and even sadder for their neglect. To me they represent a transitory moment in time, when someone had died, was remembered and mourned but soon became a faded artifact that might or might not catch the eyes of the traveler. I began a personal project of recording them during my travels. I began to eschew the freeways and plot my course to follow the back roads are much as possible in hopes of encountering one. My goal is for the viewer to visualize them in the landscape of the rural South, amidst the pine forest and the palmettos and the sandy soil or red clay. To accomplish his I often photograph with a wide-angle lens to catch the sky and the background of trees. The initial stages of the project were shot on film with cameras I have had since my youth, recently though I have moved to digital. The photos presented here are part of that ongoing project, I hope you enjoy them.
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