August 18, 2023 Image Vince Leo MCADian Vince Leo has released Remembered as a Blessing: Visitation Stones in Jewish Cemeteries. The Jewish tradition of leaving a stone or pebble at the grave site of a loved one is ancient. It is a visible way of remembering the departed by means of a humble natural object. Vince Leo began taking photographs of these “visitation stones” after several people close to him died in quick succession, and he found himself enacting the ritual of grief over and over. Placing a stone is a simple but powerful gesture that connects the living to the dead. Remembered as a Blessing contains thirty of Leo’s black and white photographs, which honor these stones as the complex objects they are: simultaneously hard, durable, pieces of matter and embodiments of ineffable spiritual relationships, often among many generations. As Daniel Mendelsohn reflects in his essay, “clusters of larger and smaller stones placed atop the tombstone itself themselves suggest family groups: parents with their children, young siblings clustered around their older brothers or sisters. Little families of stone, irresistibly calling to mind the families that now lay beneath them.” Each of Vince Leo’s photographs fuses light, focus, viewpoint, reflection, and magnification into a moment in which the ordinary and the symbolic coexist. Learn More Order Remembered as a Blessing: Visitation Stones in Jewish Cemeteries Leo's Website