Alan Leder's Photographs of "El Cemeterio de San Miguel de Allende"

Alan Leder has been a known fixture in the Chicago art scene for over two decades - as an educator, arts administrator and more recently known as an artist - photographer. Leder debuted a series of photographs last fall at Benedictine University. The work was from a series he has been working on for several years where he has gone to the city cemetery in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico to observe and photograph the nichos and other funerary art.

Leder's intention was to photograph these very personal family remembrances of departed loved ones. What he found were wonderfully unique nichos (a literal square box opening in a wall of niches where a person's remains could be placed for burial. They are often plastered over with cement and then ornamented with paintings photographs and carvings, then adorned with flowers and other mementos of the departed.) These artistic touches are endearing, and sometimes boastful of the departed person's personality. One person was a tap dancer and had a pair of shoes cast and placed onto his nicho. Another person had a photographs of a father and son who had been killed placed together. Flowers and other adornments grace these mini-shrines. Sometime using real flowers, but often using fake ones so they would never wither and would always look fresh.

Some of the cemetery pieces are small boxes with glass coverings. There are pictures of the departed within them, along with flowers as seen above, but sometimes they contain toys for a child who has died. The poignancy of these pieces is palpable. Leder has been to the cemeterio several years now, and he sometimes retakes pictures of nichos he took before as the family has come back and attended or updated their adornments. They become a record of attentiveness to their ancestors in a culture that worships their ancestors on All Saints Day and Day of the Dead celebrations all over the country. Leder has chosen this place to document San Miguel's ancestor repository and the folk art traditions associated with death. The series promises to grow as he continues to explore the cemeterios of San Miguel and Mexico.