Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Mount Auburn as a Muse | Page 7

and a Modern Day Muse
make up complete stories and life histories for the people
whose names I saw there. Even if there were only initials, I
would make up first names and middle names and relations
for them, and use them as characters in my stories.” She
adds, “I think I probably learned to read off of the stones.
Because the letters are so big, they’re wonderful for kids.
They’re just at child height. The inscriptions are brief and
fascinating, unpredictable. So I don’t remember learning
to read per se, but I do remember being fascinated by the
inscriptions on the stones since I was tiny. I loved the ones
with poems on them.”  
One of her own poems that she wrote specifically about
Mount Auburn centers on her first visit back to the Cem-
etery after her son, Ben,
was born. “Of course
many stones memorialize
children, but suddenly
I had that parental grief
that I hadn’t had before
when I was reading the
inscriptions on the
monuments. Before
they’d just been beautiful;
this time they hit home.”
Now That Benjamin is Three Months Old
How could I have missed them?
The headstones on this walk I’ve passed
and re-passed twenty summers now, or more.
“Our Angel Boy,” under a reclining cherub
whose face and limbs have worn to blurring. Then
“My Wife and Child.”
The mother lifts the baby overhead in laughter.
Sun streams down on broken rows of stones.
For the first time, I leave the cemetery in tears.
—Jessie Brown
Immortalizing Mount Auburn…
Richard Cheek, Photographer
“There are many aspects of the Cemetery that I dearly love,
but my affection for them may have nothing to do with my
ability to capture them effectively. That’s up to the viewer to
judge when looking at my photographs,” says photographer
Richard Cheek. “I’m particularly fond of the way time has
been allowed to gently take its toll at Mount Auburn: the
great oak tree trunk that appears to have swallowed the
balusters of an iron fence, the fading marble faces that have
been worn away by tears of rain, and the faint inscriptions
that now speak only to God because human eyes can no
longer read them. I also appreciate the myriad of natural or
man-made patterns that beg for your attention as you pass
by, especially the seasonal carpets made by leaves, acorns, or
flower petals that briefly overlie carved stone surfaces. But
some of these aspects, such as indecipherable
epitaphs, can be difficult to convey in a visually arresting
manner.”
Richard Cheek, a Belmont-based freelance photographer,
made his first professional visit to Mount Auburn nearly four
decades ago when working with the Cambridge Historical
Commission on the Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge
series. He returned to the Cemetery in the early 1980s to
record the historic iron fence along Mount Auburn Street,
before it disappeared,
for the Society for
the Preservation of
New England Antiq-
uities (now Historic
New England), and
again in the early
1990s to photograph
the Cemetery for his
book for The Trustees
of Reservations Land
of the Commonwealth.
It was following that
last assignment in
1993 that the Cem-
etery commissioned
Cheek to capture
the beauties and
mysteries of Mount
Auburn for its own
publications.
Now, close to
twenty years later, Cheek has a collection of several thousand
photographs of the Cemetery. He has returned year after
year to capture Mount Auburn’s
unique qualities and, in the
process, has created an important
photographic document of this
ever-evolving landscape. His
images, all shot on film, highlight
Mount Auburn’s most iconic
and celebrated views as well as
its more secretive and intimate
corners and details. “I’ve expe-
rienced so many extraordinary
moments in so many locations
all over the Cemetery that I
have no single favorite place.
I’ve probably spent more time
in Consecration Dell than any-
where else; first, because my
Above: Richard Cheek
son, Benjamin, is buried there;
Above, left: Bigelow Chapel,
and second, because I took the
photo by Richard Cheek
photographs for A Guide To
Fall/Winter 2011 | 5