In May 2023, I had the pleasure to meet Paul Koudounaris, an author and photographer with a Ph.D. in Art History. He’s the author of the recent book, Faithful Unto Death: Pet cemeteries, animal graves, and eternal devotion. For years, he’s researched cemeteries and death traditions. He is also a cat lover, having published a book, A Cat’s Tale: A Journey Through Feline History, in which his cat, Baba, gives a history of the world from a feline perspective.
In his latest book, he turns his attention to pets, pet owners, and the kind of devotion that motivates the existence of pet cemeteries. Koudounaris visited the Aspin Hill Memorial Park, and commentary and photos from the cemetery are included in this beautifully written and illustrated book. There’s a review of his book on the BBC website, which gets to the heart of his work better than I could. Here’s a link to the article.
Shep the dog to a WW2 pigeon: Eight strange and poignant images of pet cemeteries BBC.com, September 22, 2024.
