The quiet before the storm

I came across this rather charming little sepia photograph in an album today. I believe this is a photograph of my wife's grandmother and that it was taken in June or July (I was drawn initially to the three vases of lathyrus odoratus!) 1914 in Markse. Its quite unusual, at least in the old photographs we have, to find a candid interior shot like this.

It seems to be a marked turning point for the photographer in that the subsequent pages are dominated by portraits of men in army uniform. Perhaps most poignantly, in a later interior shot, the framed photographs on the table in the background are replaced by ones of men in uniform.

As we reach 404 British service men and women killed in Afghanistan I wonder what's really changed.