The Lillian Virginia Mountweazel Research Collection

Mountweazel produced a State Department–sponsored photo essay on Parisian cemeteries, prominently featuring the graves of esteemed thinkers like Oscar Wilde and Van Morrison. Motivated by her admiration for literary and artistic legacies, she sought to honor these influential figures through evocative images that captured the tranquil beauty of their final resting places. 

 

Her essay not only showcased the serene landscapes of historic cemeteries but also highlighted the transnational creative connections that these icons embodied.

 

One of her most intriguing photographs, known from several journal entries, was titled Portrait de la jeune fille en feu. This image depicted the grave of Marianne Cannes, a critically underrecognized late eighteenth-century painter. 

 

Tragically, while Mountweazel wrote about this photograph in her journal, no known copies of the image exist today. Her close friend, the writer Héloïse Borges, recounts that Mountweazel explained the loss by saying the negatives flew out of her bag on the tarmac of Paris Orly Airport and were incinerated when they were sucked into the turbine of the plane she was boarding—a time when passengers had to walk up stairs to board flights. 

 

This mysterious accident erased a significant piece of her artistic legacy, leaving only the memory of her dedicated work to honor cultural heritage.