I’m almost finished moving… after bribing all of my friends with promises of pizza, beer, and women/men of loose morals, I was able to drag all of my insanely heavy objects across MPLS to my new home. To summarize: I love living in Whittier. It is the perfect neighborhood for a lover of both urbanity and steamed dumplings. However, more on that in another post.

Today I would like to address something that I found while moving.

Back in 2006, when I was working on the Stolen Identity Project in Bulgaria, I was given a couple of old photo-lithographs. I didn’t really give much thought to them as they were presented to me by some British folks that were renovating their new home near Veliko Turnovo. I almost immediately rolled up the two prints and placed them into a large Ouzo bottle case that I picked up in Greece. A few wine/beer/vodka filled days later, I learned more of the photographs I was given.  In conversation with the Brits, I discovered that the photographs were peeled off of the garden wall and front gate and wall of their new home immediately before they demolished the old masonry.

It turns out the images they gave me were actually Necrologues — images of the dead who inhabited either that house or the area nearby. Apparently in Bulgarian culture, the public announcement of a death takes the form of physically placing a small poster, photograph, or drawing of the deceased in the public sphere. Even during Communist rule, these images were posted. Bridges, park benches, walls of private homes, trees, fountains, the outer gates of luxury hotels — all of these structures that delineate public and private space in its crudest terms are receptacles for the personal statements and independent voices expressed about lost loved ones.

I was amazed to witness the indirect transcendence of property laws. Generally, no one made an attempt to remove the signs… they existed until they disintergrated…

{PICS TO FOLLOW SOON}