Isabel Wachenheimer buiten op een stoel 1934 - 1938

This photograph, titled ‘Isabel Wachenheimer buiten op een stoel’, was taken in August 1934 by an anonymous artist. It’s a simple shot in monochrome, but it’s the composition that really grabs me, the way the photographer sees a world within a world. The little girl sits, like a tiny queen, in a full-sized chair. Next to her, a scaled-down version of her own seat, a doll-sized replica. There's a doubling going on here, a play with perspective and scale, a reminder that how we see things depends on where we're standing, or sitting. The artist is playing with the ideas of the microcosm and the macrocosm, nesting realities within one another. It reminds me of the early photographs of Eugène Atget, the way he saw the city as a stage set, capturing the quiet moments of everyday life. Like Atget, this anonymous artist finds a kind of poetry in the ordinary, elevating a simple portrait to something strangely profound. A little bit of mystery for us to ponder.