Karl-Heinz Arndtheim, de tweede echtgenoot van Isabel Wachenheimer, in militair uniform met militair hoofddeksel op het hoofd 1944 - 1955

This anonymous photograph shows Karl-Heinz Arndtheim in military uniform, and I wonder what the person behind the camera was thinking, what they wanted to capture. It's a small picture, barely bigger than my hand, and the limited palette is just shades of grey, like looking through a rainy window. The light gives the surface a soft glow. If you look closely, you can see the paper’s texture, almost like canvas. The graininess gives the picture a ghostly feel, like it's been pulled from a dream. I’m drawn to the crisp detail of the military badge on his hat; such a formal emblem juxtaposed with this young man's gentle smile. The photograph feels like a conversation, a dialogue with the past, not unlike the work of Gerhard Richter, whose blurred, grayscale paintings evoke the way memory obscures and transforms the images we hold dear. It's a simple image, but like all good art, it holds so much more than it shows.