RomanceEverAfter

Photo Gallery:
Photo Study: Photography as Art and Story

Melissa Hamilton

"Memorial Day: A Time to Remember"

Memorial Day is a time of family, picnics, and parades.  It is also a special opportunity to reflect upon the men and women who have come before.  In particular, those individuals who have served their country in a period of war.

During the Memorial Day in 2005, I decided to once again visit the Naperville Cemetery.  As I mentioned in my previous visit in Stone Reveals a Story, cemeteries are interesting places to reverently visit.  A thousand stories are written in the pages of the past.  

One detail that can fill your heart with awe is viewing the flags waving in the breeze.  For it is at this designated time of acknowledgement that the American flag is placed at the grave site of veterans.

As a photographer, the day's experience was hidden in the details as I meandered through the stories of stone.  A flag here, a bunch of flowers nestled there, an old plaque remembering a soldier from the Revolutionary War.  

Life can only be appreciated in the detail.  

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This photo was taken at the heat of the day.  (Notice the defined contrast of the shadow the tree).  The location is in the "older" portion of the Naperville Cemetery.  Some of the stones date back to the earlier 1800s.

The name of "Porter" is carved in this large stone.  The date of "1876" is also seen.  The details that catch the observant eye are:  The small yellow dandelion resting small and almost unnoticed next to this opposing stone.  Also of interest is how the weather of over a hundred years has left its mark on the stone itself.

Nature softens the edges of hard stone.  If you look very closely, you see lots of activity:  tiny ants scurrying about, a spider making its way at the tombstone base, the twitter of a bird as it wings it way to an unknown destination.

The name of "Henry Conrad" is etched into the stone.  Long since severed from its based, it leans proud and firm attesting to the life of a man born a hundred years ago.

This family plot is a book ready to have the first page written.  An entire generation is represented.  The "Litgins" family had sadness as the parents had lost two children very young.  Of course, this is the mid 1800s, and child mortality was higher during this period.

*Continue to the next page to view photos of Veteran sites*

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