Neon’s A Doll A Migraine-less Day, More Or Less - 2019 edition!

[neon_jellyfish]

Oh, what a lovely picturesque cemetery!  It's sad when graves are forgotten or abandoned, or have the stones tipped over, but so nice that people actually make a traditional event out of going and looking after them.  There's such a contrast between the 3rd and 4th photos here; it looks like this is some other ancient world, and then >boom< skyscrapers in the background.  I especially like the 3rd (that one is really magazine-worthy) and 8th ones, and what a marvellous collection of lights in the last one.
I enjoyed the little tour of your surroundings.  What a great spot for photos.

Thank you!

This cemetery is quite old, so there are a lot of graves of families that died out and there's no one left to take care of them, and after a while, no one even knows who rests in them. After some time (I can't tell you exactly how long, but it takes years), these old graves are emptied and re-assigned to new owners. As for the photobombing skyscrapers, the cemetery used to be on the outskirts of Prague, but the city got bigger and completely surrounded the cemetery with mostly ugly modern buildings. It's a shame, but it can't be helped.

What a lovely tradition, and great photos!

Oh wow, this is all so wonderful.

Thank you both!

What beautiful photos, and the cultural history about the grave candles is fascinating!

If I recall accurately, you wanted to take some photos like this last year, but there were too many people in the cemetery and you could not get the shots you wanted. It looks like you had the place to yourself today, at least for a little while; just you, your dollies, and the no-doubt amused spirits.

Thank you!

Yes, I wanted to do this last year, but it didn't work out. Last year, the All Souls' Day fell on friday, and that always means more people, because a lot of people in Prague have relatives in other places, so they tend their Prague graves on friday and then leave for weekend and visit all the other graves (some people jokingly call it Grave Tour). This year's Dušičky fell on saturday, so most people were already away and I had more peace for playing with my doll in the cemetery. Sadly, it also meant less candles, because these burn for 8-10 hours, so most graves were already dark, as they were decorated yesterday. Another thing that helped was that we went there shortly before closing time, so most people already left. Still, there were dozens of people, but mostly in other, less abandoned parts of the cemetery.

Honestly, I still feel weird about doing dolly photoshoot on graves, but since I'm now a 'grave keeper', I thought it might be OK. My great-grandmother and my great-great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather didn't object when I asked for their permission  


Day 307

I wanted to do the thing I wanted to do on Halloween (see that sentence? I'm Shakespeare reincarnate), but my migraine had other plans. Cold weather came unusually early this fall, so most of my mom's balcony garden froze to death, but a few plant heroes survived.



Filter!