Cover photo by Jane Handel.
In 1995, Loren edited the book Death’s Garden: Relationships with Cemeteries for Automatism Press.
Death’s Garden was originally envisioned as a showcase for Blair Apperson’s photos. Before his death, Blair documented graveyards from the California Gold County to the Bahamas. As Loren pursued the project, she discovered that everyone’s life has been touched by at least one graveyard. The book blossomed into a collection of over two dozen essays and more than 200 photographs involving 27 contributors, ranging from confrontationalist Lydia Lunch and ceramics professor Mary Jo Bole to artist/poet Jane Handel and some who were published for the first time.
In Death’s Garden, cemeteries from Argentina to Wall Street provided a quiet place for meditation, the best place for a ghostly game or to gossip about dead celebrities, and the only place to really connect with others in our tumultuous modern world. Authors considered teenage suicide, the death of parents and friends, their own mortality, the transience of fame, and the nature of death itself. The limited edition of 1000 copies sold out in 18 months.
Reviews:
“The photographers and writers relay their thoughts on the relationship between the living and the dead, creating a feast for the eyes and senses. Death’s Garden goes a long way in showing just what these residences of the dead have to offer to those of us that are still among the living.” — Maximum Rock N Roll
“Death’s Garden is an anthology of cemetery tours from all around the world, well-photographed, and smart enough to know it’s not the where and when of certain burial grounds that intrigues us, it’s the why as well. There’s a certain joy about Death’s Garden which is hard to pin down; the sense that just as no two graveyards are the same, no two burial beliefs are the same, either.” — Alternative Press
“This impressive book is so striking that, upon opening its binding, one is hard pressed not to be moved by its contents. With every perusal, the reader finds another thing to think about.” — Carpe Noctem
