Victorian romance

For John Grant genealogy led to a new career. For Lisa Lewis a childhood passion led to an unusual career. For both a photo of a tombstone led them to each other.

Let’s sort that out.

John – a retired recording engineer who worked with John Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen at the Power Station in New York – was living in Massachusetts. As a hobby he was traveling around shooting cemetery photographs to post on his website and Facebook.

Meanwhile, Lisa was living in West Pittston working as a living history actress called Victoriana, portraying a Victorian era woman at a wide variety of events and at the Frederick Stegmaier Mansion in Wilkes-Barre.

Lisa became one of a staggering 200,000 people who accessed John’s cemetery photography website. When she saw the photo which is on the bottom right of this page she was intrigued and wondered what the photographer was like. She soon found out he was a lot like her, when, through a mutual Facebook friend, they became Facebook friends.

At the time John was working on a book of late 19th and early 20th century cemetery photographs for publisher Schiffer Books. “We started talking,” John said. “We found we had a lot in common. I knew she had an empathy, a sensitivity for that era and I asked her to help with the book.”

They got on so well they linked their sites and soon their lives. They met physically for the first time at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn on May 2. A month ago John moved in with Lisa at her 1870s home in West Pittston.

John’s book title is “Final Thoughts.” It will be published next fall. It’s described as a highly-stylized, coffee table book of full-page photos of tombstones with epitaphs, with a forward by Doug Keister, a critically-acclaimed California-based author of 35 books, including five on Victorian architecture.

John stumbled onto the idea to shoot a gallery of cemetery photos after finding his ancestors’ graves. John is still reeling from the way his cemetery photographs took off. He has more than 3,000 Facebook friends including high school students from all over the world who are incorporating his work and style into school projects.

While John, 57, describes his photos as “a documentation of 300 years of death in America” there is nothing morbid, dark or scary about the photos. John didn’t look for, or find, ghosts. “If I see an orb,” he said with a laugh, “I clean the lens.”

John believes the photos actually represent a celebration of life. “They remind that life is precious. Live, love, be in touch with one’s feelings.”

Some of the photographs were shot in small roadside pocket cemeteries and small parish cemeteries. Others were shot in well-known cemeteries like Woodlawn in New York, where Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington, among many other celebrities, are buried.

Established in 1863 Woodlawn is laid out like a park, which, as Lisa pointed out, was common in the Victorian era, when people had family picnics in cemeteries as a way to connect with their late family members.

Lisa, 46, and a 1982 Pittston Area graduate, started collecting Victorian era fashions when she was 15.

Today the collection is so vast she calls it a “Victorian and Edwardian traveling museum.” Among the many projects she is working on is a Victorian fashion show for First Night in Scranton and a book called “Dressing for the Titanic” for 2013, the 100th anniversary of the iconic disaster.

John’s next project is a young adult historical novel based on the real life of a 12-year-old drummer boy who was the first Civil War casualty from New York.

All their projects are collaborations through their company The Passion Project.

The best testimony to the quality of John’s cemetery photos, at least until the book comes out, are comments from his Facebook fans, like these:

John, your use of your art, the beauty of the images and the power evoked by the written words will do more for cemetery preservation than any group, website, or individual could hope to aspire to. We all have relied on records, cemetery caregivers, history books etc and etc.. Using your art form and talents bring people to life, gives them names, personalities, and makes us all ponder their personal stories and wonder who they were as people. You act as a catalyst to allow these graves to “speak" and thus be "befriended”. All lovers of beauty and the human condition will surely buy your book and pass it on to relatives and friends. Consider your work as an investment in the future for these cemeteries. You are the best caregiver they could ask for. From one dedicated to cemetery preservation I thank you.

This transmits such a sense of reverence. I am taking time enjoying your photos, they touch my life John.

Your photographs are exquisite. You have raised the dead for that final recognition.

I really understand every time I look at your art. There are so many emotions in some of them. But all of them have their own story to tell. That is one of the rules that I try to live by. I have a strong feeling that what you teach me, both through our emails and through your art, I will carry with me throughout my life. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.

I have to say that these pictures are more beautiful than words could express. You are extremely talented with your camera and you have an eye that captures everything at a breathless moment. You bring life to every statue you photograph. You are the one to call to bring life through a picture. Wow.

John Thomas Grant does something magic to make each grave stone look unique and special. I wonder if the person under looks at his final place on earth and says “someone does remember me.” The photos do honor the deceased in a special memorial.

I’d thought cremation would be the way I would go, but after seeing your photos of cemeteries, I’m not so sure now.