Meet the creative minds behind a stunning photographic journey through Ohio’s cemeteries offered a rare glimpse into the stories, artistry, and history captured within these places of silence.
This Place of Silence is a photographic portrait of Ohio’s cemeteries and burial grounds by Ohio photographers Ian Adams and Randall Lee Schieber. The text and photo captions by Robin L. Smith provide an overview of burial grounds’ history and many fascinating details about gravestones, mausoleums, statuary, and cemetery landscapes. Together, they gathered photos of cemeteries across Ohio’s 88 counties.
On Monday, October 28, 2024, authors Randall Schieber and Robin Smith came to the Clark County Public Library to share what drew them to this project and how they came to put it together.
Meet the Authors
Ian Adams has twenty-one photography books and more than sixty-five Ohio calendars to his credit. He conducts nature and garden photography seminars, workshops, and slide programs throughout North America and taught digital photography at Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster from 2010 to 2019.
Randall Lee Schieber is a professional photographer based in Columbus, Ohio. He specializes in editorial, architectural, location, and travel photography and has published eight books and fifteen calendars. His work has appeared in a variety of local and national publications.
Robin L. Smith is the research director at Columbus Business First newspaper. She is the coauthor (with Randall Lee Schieber) of Columbus: A Photographic Portrait and Ohio: Then and Now, and the author of Columbus Ghosts: Historical Haunts of Ohio’s Capital and Columbus Ghosts II: More Central Ohio Haunts.
Origin Story
Smith has been fascinated by cemeteries her entire life, and for over twenty years, she’s dreamed of creating a book like this. She and Schieber had often discussed making a photography book centered on cemeteries. Their first collaboration, Ohio: Then and Now (2006), featured Schieber’s photographs of historic sites, with Smith providing the text. Both shared a particular love for Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery. When the pandemic hit, they finally found the time to start this long-awaited project.
Like Smith, Schieber had also worked with Adams on a previous book called Ohio in Photographs (2017). Together they captured images of places and people across all eighty-eight Ohio counties. Through this project, Adams built a strong relationship with Ohio University Press. They took an interest in their cemetery portrait book pitch.
Over the next five years, the three of them set out to research and visit all 88 counties in Ohio. Schieber focused on the southern 44 counties, while Adams covered the northern 44. Schieber noted that they often returned to sites multiple times to capture seasonal changes or observe wildlife migrations.
Robin Smith and Randall Schieber gave an author talk at Clark County Public Library on their new book, This Place of Silence: Ohio’s Cemeteries and Burial Grounds.
During the two-hour presentation, they gave anecdotes while displaying their favorite images from the project.
I was personally amazed at what these photographers were able to capture in terms of the textures and colors of their environments.
Book Contents
The introduction provides an overview of the historical place of burial grounds in our society and their value today not only as rich sources of history but also as repositories of art, architecture, and nature.
Smith writes, “Cemeteries record the history of their communities in their names and dates, but they also tell us how a community wanted its history recorded: How did this community see itself? What was important to that community? Who were the prominent people, and what did they accomplish? Graveyards, especially older ones, are also full of quirky names and mysteries. Who would name a child Nimrod, and where did that name come from? Why would two families build identical side-by-side mausoleums? Who would want a grave marker that looks like a pile of stones?”
Chapters cover prehistoric mounds and early European American burial grounds; the evolution from rural cemeteries in the nineteenth century to modern green burials; art, architecture, and symbolism in cemeteries; cemeteries and nature; military and institutional burial grounds; and distinctive ethnic cemeteries.
Smith highlights along with Adams and Schieber’s photography how these historic landscapes are full of beauty, hope, and honor for those Ohioans who came before us.
Robin Smith (left) and Randall Scheiber (right) graciously signed my copy of This Place of Silence.
This book is ideal for cemetery enthusiasts and landscape photography fans alike. Smith’s invaluable insights cover everything you’d want to know about cemetery history.