The cemetery as a site for aesthetic enquiry in Art Education

This article aims to introduce an innovative element to teacher training in Art Education. Grounded in romantic, ‘kitsch’ and even ‘gore’ archetypes in literature, painting and cinema, both gravestones and cemeteries have become a central part of our collective imagination in western culture. These visual artefacts can therefore play an important role in helping us to understand the often complex relationships between images and writing. The enduring power of gravestone texts, which are commonly inscribed in marble, offers the potential to address issues that have not previously been explored in teacher training education. We hope to promote the acknowledgement of cemeteries as spaces of reflection and historical memory, both of which are key areas in the pedagogical analysis of modern visual cultures. Employing an Arts Based Education methodology, this study uses photographs taken by its author as core sources of information and analysis, in the manner of a photo-essay or visual essay.