Kickstarter For a New Book

Link to Kickstarter campaign here.

Hello! And welcome back to us all! I’ve been a bit absent, haven’t I? There’s a completely reasonable and logical explanation for this. Writer’s block. I’m sure I have things to say about something, but I just don’t have the words to say them. I don’t know why.

I’ll sit down to write or to come up with ideas, and there’s just nothing there. Nothing in my head. I can talk and talk about various things – I was just on the Negative Influence podcast and had a bunch of stuff to say! You should check it out. It was a great conversation! But when it’s just me and the keyboard or me and a pen, I’m rather empty.

Sure, I could push through it and just say whatever b******t, but I’m not really in the business of “making content,” so when I don’t have something to say, I’d much rather just not say anything.

Which means that I have something to say, doesn’t it?

Well, I’ll say it.

There’s a Book

For the past few years, I’ve focused a lot of my photography on small, often abandoned, cemeteries through the West and Midwest. I’ve finally decided to put together a book of some of these photos.

The book is titled: Where the Plow Cannot Find Them. And right now, if you’re listening to this in mid-November of 2025, I have a Kickstarter campaign going to help release the book.

While I’ve had writer’s block, I haven’t had photobook block. The thing is ready to go to print; I just need it to find an audience. And that’s where you come in. If you’re willingly listening to this, then there must be something about my photography or words that you like or can at least tolerate. Thank you for that. And fortunately, this book has both.

So here I sit, still wracked with writer’s block, trying to come up with something to say that’s more than “hey, buy my book, I bet you’ll like it.

I guess I can tell you a little about the book itself.

This book contains 75 photographs of gravesites and 75 stories about the photographs and the people buried there. I am based out of Washington, and so many of them come from this state. Others come from Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Wyoming, and Oregon. Future books will feature more and different states, but Washington will always likely have a special focus for me (if for no other reason than it’s easier).

It is the culmination of thousands of miles, hundreds of cemeteries, countless photographs, and months of research. It is also (hopefully) the first volume of many.

Over my years of traveling and exploring the backroads and towns of the West and Midwest, I continually came across cemeteries. Sometimes I’d stop and look around, maybe take a few pictures. But as time went on, I stayed a little longer, I looked at the names, the dates, and imagined stories. Finally, I brought along my 4x5 camera, and the cemeteries became my main subject.

My interest started as something on the surface. The stones themselves, as well as their settings, were interesting. The decay, the preservation, the way they lay upon the land, and how they sometimes sank into it, all caught my eye.

When I returned home and wished to share a few, I was at a loss for what to say about them. This is where the research came into things. After that, I had stories, sometimes detailed and sprawling, other times hardly anything more than names.

Why Pioneers?

Most people who enjoy walking, exploring, and photographing cemeteries visit the large ones, the famous ones. Cemeteries like Laurel Hill in Philadelphia or Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles get most of the visits. There’s Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery and Trinity Church in New York, as well. Their beauty as parks cannot be overstated.

However, the cemeteries I visit have mostly been forgotten by all but locals and the few family members that remain. They are small, often unkempt, and along quiet backroads or in farmers’ fields.

They contain the graves of pioneers, poor folks, and the working class. Anyone who could afford to be buried somewhere else usually was. These are the cemeteries of ghost towns and farm communities.

Most were founded in the same way: A few pioneer families established homesteads on various parcels of land. Before long, a family member would die. Maybe it was the grandfather who came along. Often it was one of the children. Then, one of the farmers would give a small piece of their land to make into a cemetery. The community would grow and expand, and the cemetery would expand along with it.

Then, finally, the pioneers would move on, selling their land to someone who was staying, and they’d leave their dead behind.

I frequent and enjoy pioneer cemeteries over those in cities or towns. Many are abandoned and deserve a little recognition. The people who are memorialized on the stones I photograph have stories, and they deserve to be remembered.

These pioneer cemeteries are often secluded and desolate. I live most of my life in a large city full of far more people than necessary. When I leave the city, I search for solitude. Few places provide more solitude than a pioneer cemetery in the middle of nowhere.

The Mission

I’ve spent so many hours photographing these small cemeteries. They’ve grown to be almost a second home for me. I feel comfortable in them, I feel a sort of mission, like this is my calling (if callings even exist).

This writer’s block thing often comes hand-in-hand with photographer’s block (or whatever we’re calling it). I haven’t picked up a camera since August. I’m always okay with this. Creativity comes when it comes, and if I force it, then photography ends up feeling like a job rather than something I love.

While I don’t miss photography when I’m not feeling creative enough to shoot something, I do miss cemeteries. I could go to one of the city cemeteries in Seattle, but there’s just no character to them. There’s no soul there. City cemeteries contain massive and beautiful stone monuments. There are thousands upon thousands of sculpted headstones, each worth its own photograph. The layout, the planning, and the landscaping of these cemeteries are all works of art. But what I long for is that small pioneer cemetery, overrun with grasses, down a lonely dirt road.

There are places that I miss, that I long for, when I’m so many miles away from them. I miss my hometown, of course. I miss the coulees and sagebrush of eastern Washington, I miss the prairies of Kansas. And, maybe most of all, I miss these abandoned cemeteries.

We often take photographs to remember a time or a person. We want to capture a sliver of the feeling we had in the moment. This is one of the reasons I photograph cemeteries. I love them so much - I don’t even have fancy words to describe it. It’s just a raw feeling down in my gut.

I put this book together for me. I understand that a book of graves isn’t really for everyone. These hours spent among the burials might be a source of calm for me, but it might not be easily translatable.

When I photograph a gravesite, my focus isn’t on making it palatable for the viewer. I’m not concerned about what will get likes on Instagram or look good as a print on a wall. My only concern is to capture how I’m feeling. This is true, of course, for every photo I take. But it’s somehow more true with cemetery photography.

I know that most of the other photos I take – the ones of small towns or abandoned homes – can be and are enjoyed by a bunch of folks. Get me in front of an old house with a dark sky, and people will actually pay money for that print (this actually happened). But the grave of some child who died of smallpox in 1890? That’s not such an easy sell.

But that’s where I’d rather be with my camera.

The Stories

When I’m in the cemetery, I have almost no sense of a story. There’s just names and dates. Sometimes I can piece a little narrative together (like when a mother died in childbirth), but the details must come later.

This book contains stories for each of the photos, for each of the graves, and the people memorialized on the stones. The research for these stories was necessarily rudimentary.

My main source was, of course, findagrave.com. There, a user community photographs and fills in details of those buried in nearly every cemetery. Often they include death certificates, obituaries, and lists of family members.

My other source is the plethora of old newspapers available on newspapers.com. Sometimes there’s not much to learn. Other times, there’s far more than I can use. Usually, it falls somewhere in the middle.

When I take the photo, I never know what the story will hold. Obviously, it’s almost always a sad ending. But I do try to stay centered on their lives rather than their deaths.

I’ve shared two of these stories on Substack already. In the episode titled “However It Happened, James Was Dead.” Both came out of the cemetery at Spring Ranch, Nebraska, and both stories are retold in full in this book.

I also give as full an account as possible of Poker Jim, a cowboy from North Dakota. Oh, that involves a blizzard and a frozen corpse crashing a poker game. You’ll have to read it in the book; it’s a fun little tale that might even be true.

And while it has some longer stories, each photograph is accompanied by a quick little tale.

For instance, there’s Frankie Snyder, the child of a family originally from my home state.

Frankie Snyder was born in March 1879 in Oregon. Her father, Allen Porter Snyder (AP to his friends), was, like many Snyders, born in Pennsylvania.

At the age of 32, he married a woman with the delightful name of Missouri Officer. Friends called her Zude.

According to Zude’s obituary, she was “born in a tent on the plains, August 13, 1845, at a place known as Ash Hollow, Wyoming,” though it was actually Three Island Crossing in Idaho. Either way, she was born on the Oregon Trail as her parents and their eight (now nine) children emigrated from Missouri. They were part of a wagon train led by Stephen Meek, and were part of the “Lost Wagon Train”.

Zude and AP settled on a farm near Dayville, Oregon, and together had six daughters. In Zude’s obituary, Frankie is mentioned as having “died after arriving at the age of womanhood.”

Frankie died at the age of 19 in 1898.

Curiously, one of the Snyder girls regained the Officer name when she married her first cousin, Early Officer, after divorcing her first husband.

There are 74 other stories in the book, some longer, some shorter.

The Four Things

If you’re of a certain age, you might remember the Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete & Pete. If not, just bear with me. Pete & Pete was created by a fellow named Will McRobb. In interviews, he talks about a bit of his philosophy when creating a story. It must be all of these four things: Sad, Funny, Strange, and Beautiful.

When I heard him talk about it, I realized that, while he put it much more succinctly than I ever could, this is how I try to work as well. With every book and zine I produce, I try to make sure that there’s a bit of sadness in them, a bit of humor. I want to show the strangeness of where I explore, and its relentless beauty. These four elements are essential to my work, and I wanted to make sure that my new book has them as well.

These are stories about people buried in forgotten cemeteries. They are almost automatically sad. There’s really no way to avoid sadness. But because the sadness is so obvious, the other things – Funny, Strange, and Beautiful – become even more necessary. Fortunately, humans are pretty hilarious. Also, there’s the Poker Jim story. Really, I’m excited for you to read it.

As for strange, that’s certainly a matter of opinion. I came across a cemetery in North Dakota called the Sons of Jacob Cemetery. It’s essentially the last remnant of a Jewish pioneer colony. The stone I chose to focus on isn’t a stone at all, but a tin box with words in both English and Hebrew punched into the sides, probably with a hammer and nail. It is the grave of Joseph Adelman, and the entire Sons of Jacob story is just strange. You’ll see.

That leaves beauty. To me, it’s all beautiful. But even those a bit creeped out by graves can admit that the stones themselves are beautiful. Some are masterfully carved by sculptors who were at the peak of their craftsmanship. Others are made of cheap concrete with the names and maybe the dates scratched into them. But there’s one monument that always comes to mind as a piece of outsider art.

Who it memorializes is lost to time. No name remains on it. Its base is just an upside-down wash basin, a blank marble footstone bolted to a post rises out of it, and a short plank of wood is fastened above that. The whole thing is topped with a rusty iron cross. When a loved one dies and you haven’t two pennies to rub together, a memorial of some kind can still be fashioned. The love felt for the deceased will be obvious, and there’s something endlessly beautiful about that.

Well, Let’s Talk Gear, I Guess.

I don’t really enjoy talking about gear. I can hardly even remember which lenses I use. I have to look up which specific model of camera I shoot with. These things (or at least the names of these things) aren’t important to me. I just don’t care.

That said, my camera is a Chamonix 45F-2. It’s a great camera, I recommend it highly. I shoot with a variety of lenses. There’s an old brass 27cm lens by Steinheil. It’s an antiplanet, which means something. I also have a 150mm Schneider Xenar, which I’m still getting used to. I’ve got a 90mm Schneider-Kreuznach for the wider shots. Mostly, I guess it’s German lenses. Not sure why. It just sort of happened that way. And yes, I had to look up every single one of these, and even as I write this sentence, I have already forgotten what they were. So let’s move on.

This is a large format camera. My photography, especially in cemeteries, would be so much easier if I’d shoot with a smaller camera. Even my Mamiya RB67 (the greatest medium format camera ever made) would be easier. But that’s not really the point.

While I’ve photographed cemeteries using 35mm and 120 format cameras, all of these photos were taken with a 4x5 field camera. This forces and entices me to slow down my process, to think specifically about what I want to photograph and why.

A 4x5 camera is a bulky thing. For mine, a tripod is essential. This requires lugging a case full of equipment through a cemetery gate and to whatever I want to shoot. Sometimes it’s hot or humid, sometimes the wind is whipping, and the dust is blowing. Sometimes it’s cold or raining. One cemetery introduced me to the yellow star thistle, and I can’t express how much I hate that invasive species. There is no shortcut, no quick way around these obstacles, only made more intense with a large format camera.

Each of the photos in the book was shot on X-ray film – film that was originally designed and manufactured for use by radiologists. Though most of them long since moved on to digital, some (especially veterinarians) still use film - though most of the companies making it, such as Kodak and Agfa, no longer do. Fuji, possibly the last remaining manufacturer, will likely not be in the game much longer.

And so I’m using a dying medium within an art form thought of as dead to photograph final resting places. There’s something poetic (or at least coincidental) about this.

Practically speaking, X-ray film is less expensive than regular film. I buy 8x10 or 10x12 sheets and cut them down to 4x5, thus saving even more money.

Photographically, the emulsion on the film I use is sensitive to only blue light. Most black & white film available today is sensitive to the full spectrum. Others, known as “orthochromatic” are sensitive to blue and green. But my go-to emulsion is blue-sensitive-only.

The early photographic emulsions used in wet plate and tin type photography were also only sensitive to light within the blue spectrum. This gives the film I use a similar sensitivity and thus a similar look.

Radiology film has emulsion on both sides (on regular film, it’s just on one side). The original reason it was manufactured this way was to cut down on the amount of radiation the patient would be exposed to. For me, this means that I can’t develop the sheets in a tank or in anything that touches the film. Instead, I must develop the sheets in trays lined with a glass bottom so as not to scratch the emulsion. I can, however, do this under the red safelight in a darkroom. I use the Ilford darkroom tent that I’ve set up at the printshop where I work. It’s far from ideal, but my options are limited.

The Book Itself

The book will be hardback. It’s my first hardback book, and I’m both excited and anxious about it. It will be 8x10 and 188 pages. It’s also my longest book thus far.

Because I have a hard time leaving well enough alone, I am going to attempt to screenprint a dust jacket for the book. I’m not totally sure I can pull this off, so I’m not promising anything. I’m trying some new techniques, and if they work, then great. If they don’t, well, hardcover books don’t need a dust jacket, but it would be nice.

As for the price, it’s important to me that it’s as affordable as I can possibly make it. I’m asking $40 for it. This also makes it my most expensive book. I have some incredibly mixed feelings about this, but I’m basically breaking even. Almost. I really just want this book to exist. If nobody else wanted one, I’d print a single copy just for me.

The Kickstarter campaign ends on December 9th. If all this sounds fine with you, if it sounds like something you’d like to check out, consider picking up a copy before the campaign ends. And thank you so much if you do.

You can find a link in the show notes or just search Where The Plow Cannot Find Them on Kickstarter.

Oh, and about the name. It’s actually a bastardized line from the novel O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.

The winter twilight was fading. The sick man heard his wife strike a match in the kitchen, and the light of a lamp glimmered through the cracks of the door. It seemed like a light shining far away. He turned painfully in his bed and looked at his white hands, with all the work gone out of them. He was ready to give up, he felt. He did not know how it had come about, but he was quite willing to go deep under his fields and rest, where the plow could not find him. He was tired of making mistakes. He was content to leave the tangle to other hands....

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