Cemetery in the City

Wim Wenders

Wim Wenders' photograph Cemetery in the City was taken during one of his travels to Tokyo, Japan, in 2008. "One thing I always want to see in an unknown city or country are the cemeteries. They are like an open book. No, not to learn about the dead, but about the living." Silhouettes of Japanese tomb stones rise like dark phalluses into the frame from the bottom of the picture. The drastic contrast between the obscure black outline of the cemetery and the sunlit backdrop of dense inner city housing creates an uncanny juxtaposition between the many dead resting amidst the many living: both seem equally animate and bustling in their pictorial symbolic representation.

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