In the cemetery of Triebswetter there is a gravestone with a portrait
on it. The particularity of this
picture is that it does not show the person while she was alive, as
all the other portraits do. This picture
is in a hidden place and I will not show it to you because I always
found this too strange, and I still do.
About two weeks ago I got lost in the fog while driving alone through
the countryside of neighboring
Belgium. I stopped in the upper part of a village called Bilstain:
a few houses, a school and a dark
church with a cemetery at one side of its yard. I went inside and
took a few pictures of this unusually
dark and unfriendly place. Portraits on most of the tombstones, which
is normal but, after the second
"unnormal" portrait, I've decided to get out of there as
quickly as possible. It was creepy. I show you
a few of the pictures I've taken there (sorry, no close-ups, for decency
reasons) to confort you:
our ancestors in the Banat weren't unique in having this queer habit
of taking photographs of their deceased.
It must have been
the fashion of the time...
