Beim Dengeln 1905

This print by Kathe Kollwitz is at Statens Museum for Kunst, and it's a world of greys, blacks and whites, of course. It's an image that seems to emerge from the shadows. I can imagine Kollwitz bending over her printing plate, her face close to the metal, etching away with acid, and thinking about the woman she's depicting. What's she thinking, this woman, as she sharpens her scythe? Is she lost in her own world, just getting on with the job? It's such a mundane task, but in Kollwitz's hands, it becomes monumental. The texture is everything here, isn't it? You can almost feel the roughness of the paper, the way the ink sits on the surface, the grainy quality of the image itself. Kollwitz isn't just showing us a woman sharpening a tool; she's showing us the weight of a life. It’s the kind of image that stays with you, like a shadow.