Alina Wang

The Woodlands (2016—) is an ongoing project that features the Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia. The series is concerned with how we remember our loved ones through the built environment. I combine history, an interest in changing landscapes, and the relationships between human and natural activity. I carefully observe the shifting of light, form, and time in the cemetery, discovering images that seem both familiar and surprising.

I have been visiting and photographing the Woodlands for several years. I love to visit during every season, taking note of how dramatically the landscape changes from summer to winter. Every time I go to the cemetery, I think about what it means to be a temporary visitor in a place that is steeped in others’ histories and the passage of time. The permanence of death contrasts with the ephemerality of the people who pass through. I also think about the shifting geographies (natural and human-made) of the cemetery, which are constantly evolving on multiple timescales. The cemetery was here for more than a century before me, and it will still be there long after I’m gone. I can observe and try to record its many moods and seasons, but there is something reassuring about its spatial and temporal vastness, its mystery, and its unknowability.

I’ve included images of the cemetery that speak to the subtleties of all these changes – things left behind by visitors; things left behind by the plants inside the cemetery itself. How different kinds of light illuminate certain parts of the cemetery at certain times. I am always struck by the strong presence of others (both living and dead), no matter how deserted the cemetery seems. These presences are almost always made visible through absence: I see it in the objects left by visitors and in the engravings on tombstones, which always surprise and move me. By photographing these markers of human activity, along with the subtle effects of natural elements, I hope to honor the cemetery and the depths of all its changes.