This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 18, 2013 - About five years ago, photographer Lois Ingrum passed a makeshift memorial without even thinking about it. She turned back to document it, not then realizing the impact it would have on her or the journey it would start. For the past year, though, Ingrum has traveled around the country documenting makeshift memorials in a year-long pilot program with the Regional Arts Commission.
“The Doll Project” tells stories of grief and healing from Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Hunstville, Philadelphia, Delaware, New York, LA, Atlanta and St. Louis. It opens in the atrium of the Missouri History Museum on Saturday, Jan. 19.
While working on getting the exhibit installed, Ingrum took a few moments to share a few of the photos from the exhibit and talk about her year. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Beacon: Like most people, I’ve seen these temporary memorials along the highways and I always wonder about the stories behind them. How did this project begin for you?
Ingrum: I was out in the community with a group of students and ... we were walking around the school area and we came across a monument, and we passed it. We walked passed it. We didn’t even look at it.
As we passed it, one of the students said, Ms. Ingrum, are we passing this? And I said, we just passed someone’s life, without recognizing it, without knowing that somebody’s mourning and grieving. But I didn’t think of it like that initially.
I said, yes, let’s document this, this could have been the president, or this could have been a CFO of a business or a corporation. That’s how we started doing this.
Beacon: Tell us about the places you found makeshift memorials. Did they differ depending on the city, the socio-economic background or the majority racial or ethnic makeup of that place?
Ingrum: I traveled from New York to LA, from Detroit to Atlanta. In my travels, I found that the commonality among these memorials was an open expression of love. And they were embellished with wonderful comments on the person, there was some piece of the person, an object or something that would remind you of the person.
In New York what I found was they did the flowers, the candles and the teddy bears. In Detroit, they were pretty much like St. Louis, just the teddy bears or dolls or things that connected to the person. St. Louis does put in more objects that connect to the person who passed away. They make it personal. It’s really a personal connection.
In LA, they use a lot of flowers and candles, and they make them permanent monuments. In Memphis they have a lot of flowers but the flowers may spell out words, they use a lot of words and posters and concepts like that.
Beacon: You spent a year working on this project and traveling around the country. How did you find the monuments, and did you ever get to meet any of the people behind them?
Ingrum: In normal situations, I don’t know how I found these monuments except God led me there. I would hand out these cards and say, have you seen a monument, and they would say, yeah?
In Chicago, all I had to do was follow an incident that had occurred that week and I would more than certainly find a monument. I connected with a young lady in Chicago and I asked her to look out for them. She found two of them on her way. When I got there she showed me those, and then we’d just stumble upon other ones. And then there were people who would explain to me what had happened, sometimes it was family members, sometimes it was neighbors.
Beacon: We’ve seen massive makeshift monuments go up in the past few decades, from the fence at Oklahoma City to Ground Zero in New York city to most recently in Connecticut. What have you discovered about why these go up and why they’re necessary?
Ingrum: There are two ways to grieve. You can be self-destructive and that includes chemical dependence, alcohol dependence, being negative, going out and causing crime, just being angry, self-destructive. But then there’s the group that connects with humanitarian issues. They’ll write a book on behalf of the person who passed, they would start a foundation, a scholarship, a not-for-profit organization in the name of that person, or they openly expressed their grief so that the community can also help with the grief process.
When you have a shrine or a monument and a community sees it, others want to attach themselves. They can openly express how they feel about the death, and they know that other people are feeling the same way, so it helps with the healing, it helps with people moving from one point to the other.
Beacon: I think the only one we haven’t talked about is the one with the sign that reads “Remembering Mike.” Can you tell us about that photo?
Ingrum: I met a young man who was involved with gang activity, and he saw me. I had a camera in my hand and everything. He came up and was, like, "Do you know little Mike?"
I said, "No. Can you tell me somehting about him?"
He told me Mike was 15 years old, and that he himself was 15 years old. This young man said he didn’t feel he would even get to his 16th birthday.
A week later, another monument was erected. I could have easily been for this young man because he was in a negative environment.
I said, “Do you want to leave?”
And he said he couldn’t, he didn't know how he could.
I said, “I don’t know what I can do, but if you ever need help, here’s my card.”
When he talked to me, at first he came up to me and he looked like an adult, but as soon as he opened his mouth, I knew of his immaturity. I knew that he was a young person that didn’t have a way.