Roadside Memorials
- A memorial marker found along most high ways and usually erected at the site of a tragic accident in which some ones life was cut short.
Unnamed roadside shrine, Tampa Rd., Clearwater, Florida.
Photograph by Pam Reagan
Weathered stuffed animal fetish at a child's graveside, Sylvan Memorial Cemetery, Clearwater, Florida.
Photograph by Pam Reagan
- Roadside memorials are assemblages as remembrances as a tribute to someone who died at that place usually along roadsides. These spontaneous shrines are adorned with any of the following items:
crucifixes
roses
notes
flowers
candles
photos
stuffed animals
poems
rosaries
plants and plastic
plants greeting cards
items the person liked
wreaths including holiday related items
Unnamed roadside shrine, Tampa Rd., Clearwater, Florida.
Photograph by Pam Reagan
- Roadside memorials are created in public domains such as:
fences
stoops
entrances
roadside
sidewalks
overpasses
trees
- These shrines are established spaces to negotiate meaning as tributes to those that have died due to some accident.
- The memorials are sometimes removed from the actual scene-referring to sites of sudden death in poor traffic areas in roads with curves or trees sometimes marked with statistics by MADD or Drive Safely signage.
'Speeding Kills' signage
In Memory of Jennifer Nolletti, McMullin Booth Rd., Clearwater, Florida
Photography by Pam Reagan
Roadside Memorial
'Becky', McMullin Booth Rd., Clearwater, Florida
Photographs by Pam Reagan
Descanso en paz
Rest in peace
- These collective impressions act as sacred cultural grieving spaces of the immediacy of death in everyday life and the permanent and ephemeral objects are symobolically representative of on-going grief and therapy for those left behind.
- Descansos are small chapel like structures that can have a gate that open so that you can put gifts inside sometimes include white crosses two or three feet high and are usually cerquita = close or nearby/cross.
