Clumber Street Shrine: almost there!

CLUMBER STREET SHRINE
first and third panels

digital scrapbook layouts (each panel 7ins x 11ins)

The first panel in the triptych has been the most difficult to get right. This is probably because of the ambiguity I'm trying to achieve, suggested to me by the original condition of the photograph that I have used, which invests the souvenir of a happy occasion with a sense of anger and destruction. The photograph was purchased in Nottingham, over twenty years ago, along with the second, clearly featuring the same woman, a few years later. The young man may have been her brother but I have chosen to identify him as her intended or new husband. Had this precious family photograph been defaced by a small child, too young to know better, or were the marks and holes made by an angry child...or an angry adult? The look of defiance on the woman's face, in the second photograph, together with my estimation of the time frame during which it was taken, led me to a story of loss connected to the First World War but perhaps there is more to this story than first meets the eye: what exactly happened to the handsome but rather weak-looking young man? Was he mourned as a hero or did he desert his family, his name only to be found, a few years later, entered alongside that of another lady, in the marriage register of a church in some distant city or town?
Next week, when I've finished reworking the middle panel, I'll post all three images together, side by side. Then I'd love to hear your interpretations of the story.