Photo Essay: The Faces of Inglewood Park Cemetery

One of the more offbeat places that tourists (and locals, I suppose) go stargazing in LA is cemeteries. You're bound to find some famous founding father, war hero, architect, movie director, or starlet buried in one.

Although Inglewood Park Cemetery is where such notables as Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Ray Charles, Paul Revere Williams, and even Ray "Crash" Corrigan have been laid to rest, I'm always more interested in the neglected graves of the forgotten, rather than the oft visited interments littered with flowers, cards and messages.

I find the graveside statues peaceful, their gazes cast upwards, but their hands reaching out to me. Even in the largest of cemeteries, you can spot them from afar, their stone faces covered in lichen and moss, cast in shadow from the heavenly beams of sunlight above.
























During my visit to Inglewood Park, I stumbled upon a box of live doves placed on the lawn, ready for release, just as a procession of cars arrived for a burial. For a moment, I wondered what prominent figure might've brought such a crowd (and ritual!) to this place, but soon I was distracted by some monument of the already-dead, and so I continued my ambling through the graves.

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