Photographing in garden cemeteries across New England, I document anonymous grave markers labeled father and mother. The carved words reveal relationships between the living and the dead and function as stand-ins for our collective lineage: my mother, your father, our families. Outliving the bodies they represent, they are futile attempts at immortality as the transmission of time ultimately renders the words incomprehensible. Yet, the potent tug of parental bonds remain.

Shot in the golden hour, the stones emerge from darkness swathed in the glowing light of the in-between. They are shifting between lightness and darkness, past and present, the ethereal and the grounded. My photographs are documents of the slippage between these things.

All images ©Sarah Pollman