Karl-Heinz Arndtheim, de tweede echtgenoot van Isabel Wachenheimer, schrijvend aan een bureau met een landkaart voor zich op het bureau, 1949-1955 1949 - 1955

This small, black-and-white photograph from between 1949 and 1955 captures Karl-Heinz Arndtheim, Isabel Wachenheimer’s second husband, writing at a desk, a map spread out before him. I wonder what he was thinking as he bent over his desk. The lines of the photograph feel tight, focused on the writing hand, the map suggesting journeys, locations, a planning. Was he mapping something out? Was he writing a letter? Perhaps he’s charting a course, both literally and figuratively. There’s a beautiful, quiet intensity to this scene. Photographs, like paintings, allow us to think through feeling and experience. They are more than records of what happened: they open a space of imagination around the subject. This image seems to be an intimate moment, a glimpse into the life of someone unknown, yet familiar. It’s a moment of making that can inspire us to think and see the world from a new perspective.