Isabel Wachenheimer voor een kinderwagen en met een pop in haar armen, april-mei 1935, Stuttgart Possibly 1935

Sometime in April or May of 1935, in Stuttgart, someone made this photograph of Isabel Wachenheimer with a doll in her arms. I think about the person behind the camera, what were they thinking, what were they feeling, when they pressed the shutter button? This isn't a slick professional portrait but it is a carefully arranged composition. The girl stares out, clutching a doll and, behind her, a curtain patterned with deer. There’s a striking contrast between the girl, a small human, and the curtain, a symbol of interiority and domestic space. The girl’s gaze is direct, but there’s also an emotional ambiguity; a hint of melancholy that invites many interpretations. It reminds me of the work of other photographers who use portraiture to investigate ideas about identity, memory, and the construction of the self. All artists are in an ongoing conversation across time, echoing and expanding on one another’s ideas and observations.