Buried Louisville, Kentucky: President to Paupers, Graves of the City

Louisville, Kentucky’s cemeteries starkly illustrate the city’s socioeconomic divides, revealing a history of disparity through their headstones and monuments.

The history-rich city of Louisville, Kentucky, offers stunning examples of haves and have-nots. Nowhere is this social chasm displayed more plainly than in its cemeteries. The 154 cemeteries within the city demonstrate how the socioeconomic factors that separate us in life follow us into death. A National Cemetery, including the ornate crypt of a United States President and his wife, stands in stark contrast to the neglected City Cemetery. Less than fifteen minutes away in a nearly 300-acre majestic cemetery, a barbed-wire-topped wall separates it from a deeply troubled and neglected 28-acre lot. Across the city, examples of the chasm that is Louisville is highlighted tombstone to tombstone.

This photo series takes the reader on an exploration of the headstones, tombs, vaults, and monuments of Louisville’s dead--persons of note, stillborn children, entire families, war veterans, and more, lost forever to time. Across these grave markers, one finds genuine pieces of art, erased by time and neglect. The many graveyards and cemeteries of this unique city serve as a portal, looking at the history of Kentucky.