Isabel Wachenheimer gezeten achter een schrijfmachine 1945 - 1963

This photograph of Isabel Wachenheimer at a typewriter – who made it, we don't know. It's all about layers of shadow and light, like a painting done with a very limited palette, focusing our attention on the act of creation. The texture of the photograph feels almost palpable. You can sense the cool, smooth surface of the paper against your fingertips. The choice to capture this moment in a hazy monochrome washes away any sense of the incidental. Instead, our attention is drawn to the stark form of the typewriter and the figure of the author, hunched in concentration. The soft focus lends a dreamlike quality, like a memory half-forgotten. It reminds me of Gerhard Richter's blurred photographs, which aimed to find a new way of seeing through a lens, embracing chance and ambiguity. The image becomes less about who is in it, or what they're doing, but about the mystery of the process itself.