Untitled (Street, Vienna) 1933

This is an Edith Tudor-Hart photograph of a street in Vienna, and what strikes me first is her unusual perspective. She's up high, maybe in a building looking down, like a god, or a spy. The world she shows us is made of textures: the cobblestone streets, the sleek trams, the rough-hewn timber being pulled by horses. It's all captured in this rich, grayscale palette. Look how the light rakes across the scene, turning everything into sharp angles and elongated shadows. There’s a tension between the human-scale activities and the almost overwhelming scale of the modern city. There’s one figure walking away from us on the bottom of the frame, they are anonymous, just one amongst many. Maybe that relates to the rest of Tudor-Hart's work, in which the personal is always held within the wider political situation. Think of the way Walker Evans, in America, was making photographs that are documents but somehow also dreams. Art is never just one thing, is it?