By Caroline Lee
Lifestyles Editor

Josie Cooke has spanned the globe, making sure to visit a few cemeteries at each stop.

“It’s not like I wear black and go at night and just hang out in cemeteries,” Cooke said, for clarification. Cooke said there are a number of things that she has seen in her travels and through visiting grave sites in multiple parts of the Western world, she has collected photographs that tell a cohesive story about how people honor their dead.

On display during the entire month of July, Cooke will exhibit a collection of her photography, titled “Angels Among Them,” at the Powerhouse Gallery.

The selected photos, specifically those featuring angels, reveal the link between the countries that she has visited. The places where the photographs were taken is not often discernible: the similarities in the guardian statues of grave sites are striking from cemetery to cemetery, whether in Cologne, Germany, or Moss Point, Miss.

“It’s really interesting how people remember their dead,” Cooke said. “When they have an angel with the grave, it’s like there’s a mediary; it is, for them, a guardian for their loved ones.”

The majority of the photos in this exhibit feature statues of angels Cooke has compiled through her travels. When Cooke first developed an interest in photography, she took her mother’s 35mm camera and went to Loyola University, where she got her Bachelor of Arts degree in art and psychology.

It was there in New Orleans where Cooke fell in love with the cemeteries there and began spending time trying to capture the general feeling every person experiences when they visit a graveyard.

“I’ve always had an interest in trying to hold on to experiences,” Cooke said. “When showing pictures, I’m the girl with the fourhour slideshow.”

With her exhibit, she said she hopes to evoke the feelings she had in these graveyards to the viewers of her photographs.

Cooke went on to the University of Southern Mississippi to complete her master’s degree, has since made the switch to digital photography.

She is currently working on her Ph.D at USM in the same field. Although she has pursued working in psychology, she maintains a professional caliber in her photographic work and continues to travel to broaden her portfolio.

“Angels Among Them” will open July 1 and will run through the end of the month.

There will be an artist’s reception Thursday, July 2 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.