“Freezing time is a tricky science.”

“Death suffuses all these pictures.”

So says former fashion photographer Charlie Curtis, who has been working late on his time machine again. Readers of Southern Cultures will remember his “Signs of the South” photographic essay, which we published in our Summer 2000 issue. But unlike “Signs of the South,” which showed old and new side-by-side, this collection of photos reveals the old in decay. “Talking Tombstones” presents not only time passed, but time passing.