Wire Box with Oyster Shells, Lafayette Cemetery No 1, New Orleans
Like a pagan altar, a wire box lays, slightly askew, before the aging marble of a tomb in this still life photograph. The picture was taken at Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in the Garden District of New Orleans. The box is filled with oyster shells, Mardi Gras beads, and dead leaves emphasizing the animist aspects as alms for the dead. The person who crafted this endeavored to decorate it with wire cable ornamenting the diminutive shrine. It feels that the box was an offering of a supplicant anticipating a restoration of a right relationship with sacred order.