CLEVELAND, September 22, 2014 -- Lake View Cemetery is hosting an exhibition of noted Cleveland photographer Barney Taxel’s images of its historical, 145-year-old resting grounds, October 21 – November 9. Admission is free to the public.
“Barney Taxel is a noted Cleveland-based photographer and teacher who has been creating images of Lake View Cemetery for more than two decades,” said Lake View’s President and CEO Katharine Goss. “He has captured Lake View’s beatifically unique scenes through the seasons from a remarkably creative perspective in his new book, The Lake View Cemetery: Photographs from Cleveland’s Historic Landmark.
"Barney’s book is resplendent of the innate natural charm of Lake View Cemetery, showing broad horizons, the undulating terrain, horticulture and nature, monuments, scuptures and architecture, as well as special close-up scenes of even acorns on a gravestone,“ she said. “The book embodies the essence of Lake View.“
The 250-page coffee table book in color and black and white is published by The University of Akron Press and will be available to the public in bookstores throughout Northeast Ohio and at Lake View in late October. The book retails for $62.50. The University of Akron Press will also distribute the book worldwide and online.
"I began to seriously consider a project about Lake View Cemetery in 1999, shortly after I finished my book about Akron’s Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens. The Cemetery, within walking distance of where I live and rich in manmade and natural beauty, was an appealing place to turn my gaze, literally and figuratively, and focus my personal interest in the art of photography." The exhibit is being displayed at Lake View’s spacious Community Mausoleum, adjacent to the Cemetery’s Mayfield Gate (at Mayfield and Kenilworth roads).
“We want the public from Northeast Ohio and beyond to experience Lake View Cemetery through Barney’s eye,” said Goss. “His book will bevavailable at our Community Mausoleum and in our store at the Garfield Monument.”
The text to the book is written by Barney’s wife, Laura Taxel, with a foreword by Tom Hinson, curator emeritus-photography of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Laura, an acclaimed journalist and writer, earlier wrote the prose for the coffee table book celebrating the 100th anniversary of Cleveland’s West Side Market.