Haunting Cemeteries

I can't help it... I have an uncontrolable compulsion to visit cemeteries, and photograph traces of lives that might otherwise be forgotten if not preserved for posterity in images. Today was no exception. I thought I might be heading out for a long day trip to go visit the Belleau Wood battlefield, but a bad weather report kept me closer to home... where I wandered into a cemetery not far from here at all. And was pleasantly surprised to find that it was packed with fascinating glimpses of past worlds.
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This pair of portraits of Emile Roussel and his wife struck me as particularly poignant. Roussel was killed at the age of 40 in the fighting near Mont Kemmel in Belgium when the Germans launched a fearsome Spring offensive in Flanders, around Ypres, in 1918. In all my years of wandering cemeteries I've never come across portraits presented quite like these two, under rectangular glass, with a matting effect. IMHO these belong in a museum and not out deteriorating in the elements on top of a grave which clearly had not been tended to any time in recent history.
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