Hieros Gamos
Nineteen years ago tomorrow my mother died. My father died about eight years before that. I made this photograph around that time. The relationship of my parents was, and is, very much on my mind with this photograph. It is about those relationships, those loves of our lives, that live still after the loved one is gone. My mom was still married to my dad for the rest of her life. It was an eternal love that still is a part of my life and I still feel it.
"The sacred marriage," the literal translation of Hieros Gamos. The word marriage has more than one meaning. There is the legal definition of marriage as a contract that binds and gives rights and legal status to a man and a woman. Marriage is also a term used for bonding of two parts to form one new part. When I think of "sacred marriage" I think of the emotional marriage that joins people into each other's souls, it is an emotional bonding that transcends the plane of here and now. I think it can apply to parents and children, siblings, gay couples, lovers and even dear friends who achieve a deep lifelong affection for each other, a sacred marriage of the souls that transcends physical presence. I think our lives have many such sacred marriages that affect and effect us so deeply even after one of the parties is away from us.
About the photo: This came to me then as I was walking through this cemetery with Marie Roby (then DuBois) while on a photo expedition. As I read the tombstone, the story of this couple's lives jelled down to a handful of statistics, about their child also buried there, I thought about the great depth of details all their lives must of been and what a story was buried there untold. I put a wide angle lens on the camera, put it on the ground and set the self timer and we posed behind the tombstone. It is still one of my favorite photos. It makes me think of my parents and the loved ones both here and departed from my life.
1:04:55 PM 
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