I’ve known Cleveland commercial and fine art photographer Barney Taxel for quite some time. I was working at Akron’s Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens when he was finishing up his book about the artful Seiberling estate. It was shortly after that, in 2000, that Taxel grabbed his cameras and began seriously exploring Lake View—a Cleveland cemetery that is as much as a park as it is a burial ground. Taxel saw the potential. “It hadn’t been done before,” he says. “And it offered a huge variety of subject matter—cultural, natural, historical, artistic and seasonal.” He just released The Lake View Cemetery: Photographs from Cleveland’s Historic Landmark. I met him at Cleveland Heights coffee shop last week to talk about the iconic garden cemetery, the project and working with his wife—author, journalist and storyteller Laura Taxel.
What did Lake View Cemetery mean to you when you started a project?
A variety of things. There is a real sense of place and a sense of intention in terms of design. Also, there is a kind of non-sectarian spirituality that emanates from it. When my kids were little they had a teacher at Coventry Elementary School who was passionate about the history of Lake View. She used it a teaching tool. She’d take these second and third graders tromping through the cemetery in order to explore art, history and their community. We went there as part of a poetry project with our son’s class. Here were these kids crawling around on their hands and knees taking photos that would accompany poems. It was very touching to see and hear their perceptions and it offered me a very different perspective. I found going there myself with a childlike view opened up endless avenues of inspiration.
Can you recommend a favorite spot in the cemetery? I think Northeast Ohioans know about places like Garfield’s Monument or John D. Rockefeller’s grave, but is there an unexpected location to explore?
Those change seasonally, of course. If you have the luck to be there just the right week in the spring there’s a place called Daffodil Hill with thousands of flowers that all come up and bloom at once. It’s an amazing sight. But there are many good places to start. Certainly Wade Memorial Chapel says a lot about Lake View Cemetery. It was in honor of the cemetery’s first president, Jeptha Wade. His grandson commissioned it. It’s a work that has huge amount of intention and artistic sensibility. The interior was designed and manufactured by Tiffany Studios in New York and brought over to Cleveland by barge in pieces. Every single aspect of the interior—every finish, every mural, every fixture—was designed and crafted to be a whole piece, a whole expression. Its exterior was designed by the same architect that designed the West Side Market and the Cleveland Museum of Art. There is just a lot about the founding and direction of the cemetery, and the community, in Wade Chapel. From there, there are a lot of interpretive trails you can explore with written narratives. There are so many directions you can go in. You can visit famous people all day if you want from Charles Brush, the man who created street lighting to Ray Chapman, the only Major League Baseball player to be killed by a game pitch. He was a member of the 1920s Cleveland Indians who went on to win the championship and his grave has become a shrine to baseball.
Why do you think Lake View has become a tourist destination? This is a cemetery that is an attraction and very much alive.
As Laura points out in her stories there was actually a point in the late 19th century when it was getting so popular and crowded that they had to control traffic inside the cemetery and give out tickets. It’s a real testament to the success of the founders’ intentions, isn’t it? In addition to be a place of burial and memorial it was meant to be a place where people could come together and enjoy nature. I was in Toronto in a building overlooking one of that city’s garden cemeteries and I could see people jogging through it. I think it is an example of how we as a culture have decided to use our resources. In the 1970s the Sewer District built a huge dam in the cemetery to control flooding there and down into University Circle. Now that dam brings another element to it. Movies have been shot there. Local emergency services have trained on it. The place fills different needs over time, I guess—from films to firemen.
How do you work with your wife? What is your style of collaboration?
We start sharing over coffee in the morning. If we have energy we’ll be up late at night typing out things. In a way it was a unique project for us. We’ve done other things together, but more peripherally. I did the contemporary photography for the West Side Market centennial book. I worked from outlines she and Marilou Suszko provided for that, though. This was a different scenario in that I was the one creating content and Laura was crafting the response to it in words. She is an incredible person.
We all hope you think that.
Sure, I have to say that, right? But really, her knack for relating someone else’s story continues to floor me. She has amazing ability to reflect an experience through words. That’s not to say she didn’t struggle a bit since we know each other so well. She struggled to get me to tell her things I ordinarily wouldn’t think of expressing verbally because I am a photographer. We were able to muddle through that. I was able to say enough to help her—especially around the way I divided and paginated the book. We both came out of the process feeling very good about how we worked together.
People of all different faiths, backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses are in the cemetery, aren’t they?
Apparently the founders heavily discounted the cost of getting a plot because they wanted to ensure greater access. That is a populist philanthropic attitude that seems to be disappearing a bit. A lot of the families of the workers—stone masons and artisans—are there alongside the people they helped memorialize.
Is that where the author of the book about Lake View Cemetery plans to spend the remainder of his days?
I have some odd expectations. They have 70 undeveloped acres. I would want to be somewhere in the undeveloped part, deep in the woods. My grandchildren would need a trail of breadcrumbs or a GPS to find grandpa. That’s what I’d want.
If you pick up a copy (which you should consider because it is an unconventional guide to the cemetery and a would make a terrific holiday gift), check out pages 38, 61,107 and 217 to see my favorite photos. From Loganberry Books to the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, Barney has a slew of December booksignings and speaking engagements. See the complete list here.
