Portretten van Isabel Wachenheimer en haar ouders Eugen Wachenheimer, in Duits marine-uniform, en Else Wachenheimer-Moos 1914 - 1937

This family album page holds three photographs. There’s Isabel, her mother Else, and her father Eugen in his German naval uniform; it’s a collective portrait by the Wachenheimer family. The tones here are all gentle sepias, each image faded and softened with time. Isabel’s dress is caught in the light, highlighting the simple lace detailing on the collar. Her gaze is serious, thoughtful, betraying none of the innocence of youth we might expect to see. The framing of each shot is simple, direct, and yet the grouping on the page lends it a formal quality. The album page becomes an artwork, a collage of faces and memories. Looking at it now, I'm reminded of Gerhard Richter’s photo paintings. He reworked found images, smearing and blurring them, obscuring the details, somehow making them more profound in the process. In both instances, there's a conversation between the past and the present; it’s not just about what we see, but how we see it.