Washington ? Row after row of photos in a newspaper, each the likeness of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, were the inspiration for an artistic tribute to those who lost their lives in the conflicts.

“Faces of the Fallen,” 1,327 individual portraits of the dead produced by 200 artists, opens to the public today at Arlington National Cemetery.

The images, each 6-by-8 inches, are mounted on plain steel rods that reach to near eye level. Each rod includes a label with the soldier’s name, hometown and date of death.

Five rows are arranged chronologically by the soldiers’ times of death and stretch along a half-circle inside the small museum at the entrance to the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. The number of images does not represent all those killed; that figure now is more than 1,600.

Annette Polan, head of the Corcoran College of Art and Design’s painting department, said she was moved to create the memorial after seeing all the photos of dead soldiers displayed in a newspaper. She hopes it can have the same healing effect as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall.

Polan, 60, said she wanted to show that every death is an individual, each with their own hopes and dreams and memories. Artists were encouraged to show their own individuality and that of their subject.

A portrait artist herself who has painted Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Polan did nine of the collection’s portraits. She assigned the others to artists she knew, either personally or through their work.

Portraits in the Faces of the Fallen exhibit are shown March 16, 2005, at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington, Va. The exhibit opens today.

The artists worked mostly from newspaper and Internet photos, and some sent by families of the dead.

One particularly poignant portrait was done by John R. Phelps, a Vietnam veteran chosen to design the World War II memorial in Lander, Wyo. He painted his son, Marine Pfc. Clarence Phelps, who died April 9 from head wounds.