The North Cemetery in Manila, Philippines, established in 1904, covers an area of 133 acres. The graves range from mausoleums (some as large as 860 square feet) to flat markers and crypts to columbarium niches. The cemetery is a real labyrinth: a burial place for the dead with a population of two thousand, it is also a living space.
The living conditions here are an improvement on those experienced by slum inhabitants or the homeless who survive in the streets. Some mausoleums serve as homes or, at least, shelters. There are several sources of running water on the cemetery grounds, and levels of pollution are much lower than in traffic-clogged city streets.
Each day, some twenty burials take place in the cemetery. And death brings jobs: men are needed to build and maintain graves, carry caskets during funerals, perform exhumations, cut headstones, drive tricycles taking visitors to the graves of their departed loved ones. Women take care of children, do housekeeping chores, cook, raise chicken, grow flowers, and manufacture and sell candles. And children, like anywhere else, run around and play.
This project, carried out in January–February 2016, aims to show the everyday life of those who make their home in cemeteries and, in the context of severe housing crisis in large cities, demonstrate great resourcefulness, courage, and dignity, and strive to live decently in an environment that, to many of us, may seem uninhabitable.
Hubert Sacksteder
Hubert Sacksteder, Domicile: cimetière
March 11 to April 2, 2017
Les photographiques 2017
Centre des Expositions Paul Courboulay
Rue Paul Courboulay
72100 Le Mans
France
http://www.photographiques.org/
