Model Study 7 2008

Elina Brotherus made this photograph, Model Study 7, using photography. It's all about muted tones here, isn't it? The pale blues, the grays, the light seeping in, it's as though someone's taken the saturation down a notch, and everything is presented to us in a stripped back manner. The light is soft, like Northern light can be, and it washes over the surfaces, revealing a slightly decayed interior. There's a real emphasis on texture – you can almost feel the graininess of the walls, the aged surface of the mirror – and that globe, how it refracts the light, bends the world. Look at how the light catches on the model’s hair, the way it’s almost dissolving into the background, but is this just about technique? There's something about the way the model is seated, turned away from us, with this big, slightly distressed mirror that makes you think about time, and how it plays tricks on us. It's a scene that could easily be a painting by Vilhelm Hammershøi with that same interest in quiet interiors and solitary figures. It is this quality of quiet ambiguity that gives photography, like painting, its enduring power.