<div><p><I>I used the Polaroid as a painter might use a sketchpad. I shot freely and, as the images appeared, I loved how the Polaroid interpreted what I saw. The limitations of the plastic lens softened the features captured in stone; the softened stone wings became real wings.</I></p><p>Mauro Marinelli's iconic cemetery images captured on Polaroid juxtapose the inherent contradictions of the immediate moment: instant and everlasting. In homage to the sixteenth-century style of Nature Morte, the stone of mortuary sculptures softens like flesh and graveside tokens and bouquets of flowers depict life becoming death.</p><br></div>