Sometime later.

In about 1994 I started nagging Fred about the book. He sent me a list of sites. Somehow we never were able to match our schedules to go and do the work. When I told my friend and patron Robert Freidus about the project he agreed to help and work along side me doing the photographic part.

The pictures that you are viewing are a small sample of the images that we collected during a multiple trips to northern Italy since 1996.

What can't really be shown through individual shots is the sense of place. Every site that I have visited to date has an exterior of blank walls. Usual they are plastered in a cream or reddish tone. You quickly learn to spot them as you travel through the countryside.The entrances are the only exteral sign of what awaits you. Inside you will find a large field with a variety of monuments from simple to large and ornate.The field may also be broken into a series of smaller enclosures and interior spaces as it is in Bologna. A raised, covered porch frequently runs along the perimeter walls. There you find the monuments to the very wealth. These monuments are in the best shape, not having been exposed to the elements. Simply being covered is not enough to protect the works. In Genoa for example the interior sculptures are so covered with dust that the finet detail has been lost. The cost of cleaning and restoring these works would be well outside the normal budgets on a communal cemetary budget.

Sadly many of these sites are being "renovated". The lots in the fields are being resold if the families don't keep up the rent. The earlier monuments in the fields being ripped out and contemporary monuments are being installed. Usual these are the simplest of small marble slabs. Great historical value is being destroyed as the local communes realize that a cemetary is just a real-estate venture. The visual, three dimensional signs of a brief period of Italian middle class culture is being lost because it is too close in time to be of any value. Fifty years from now there will much discussion about this loss of an important cultural context.