Else Wachenheimer-Moos tijdens een autotour met haar schoonzus Liesel Zürndorfer-Wachenheimer en frau ?, augustus 1932, Freudenstadt 1932 - 1938

This photograph, taken by familie Wachenheimer in Freudenstadt, Germany in August 1932, is part of a family album. You can see the black pages of the album here, and the layered effect of the photographs, glued to the page. It gives me a sense of the photograph as an object, something carefully placed and considered. In the top photograph, the eye is drawn to the dark shadows of the arcade, and then to the figures moving through the space. It's the kind of image that captures a moment but also hints at a larger narrative, the kind of ‘decisive moment’ that photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was so interested in. It reminds me of a painting, a memory of a moment, like a faded dream. I think this image is like a little gem. It speaks to the power of images, and the way they shape our understanding of the past. It reminds me a little of Gerhard Richter’s use of photography, that interest in the personal, the everyday and the way it all blurs at the edges.