Isabel Wachenheimer op een driewieler in de woning van de familie Wachenheimer, mei 1931, München 1931 - 1935

This is a page from the Wachenheimer family album, it was made in Munich in May 1931, and it features their daughter Isabel on her tricycle. The snapshots are arranged in a grid, they are all slightly different, capturing Isabel both indoors and outdoors. I love the way the family have arranged them on this dark grey page with the handwritten title "Das Dreirad"— "The Tricycle." I’m so moved by the intimacy of the family album. I can imagine them sitting around, deciding how to arrange the photographs, what to include, and what to leave out. What kind of conversations did they have? What stories did they share? It’s a collaborative act of meaning-making. And how do the same family photographs mean something so different in our current context? I think about the images of children that flood our screens daily, how we see them and how we remember them. The act of viewing and seeing is never objective.