Grave Images: San Luis Valley

Beginning in 1994, award-winning photographer and installation artist Kathy T.Hettinga began a fourteen-year project to document an unknown body of funerary folk art displayed in the cemeteries of rural and largely Hispanic communities in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. Her photographs of unique grave markers made of wood, concrete, metal, sandstone, glass, and other materials by individuals or families to commemorate the passing of loved ones capture the ethereal beauty of the cemeteries and serve as a touchstone for our common understanding of loss, grief, and the need to memorialize and pay tribute.