Witch 

This unsettling image by Christian Rohlfs captures a witch, her features exaggerated into a caricature of the grotesque. See her wide, staring eyes and elongated nose, features that tap into deep-seated fears of the occult and the feminine as 'other'. This representation echoes back through centuries. Consider the ancient Greek Gorgons, whose faces were thought to turn men to stone, or even the medieval depictions of witches during witch hunts, their images weaponized to incite terror and justify persecution. The witch figure isn't static; she transforms. She's a repository for societal anxieties, a figure onto which we project our fears of the unknown, of death, of untamed nature. Even the very lines of the woodcut, scratchy and crude, contribute to the unease. The collective memory of folklore and persecution lingers here, engaging us on a primal level. The figure of the witch is a powerful emblem of how symbols evolve. She resurfaces, adapts, and finds new life in different eras, reminding us of the cyclical nature of fear and the enduring power of the image.