Eckart en Marba Titzenthaler, kinderen van de fotograaf, in een tuin in Lichterfelde, Berlijn 1925 - 1930

Waldemar Titzenthaler took this picture of his children in their garden in Lichterfelde, Berlin. The image is almost entirely desaturated, except for the odd glimmers of light caught on leaf and petal. You can tell it’s a garden, but with its dense foliage and overgrown trees, it feels more like a liminal space, or the memory of one. The tones range from an inky black to a milky white, with all shades of grey in between. The light seems to be fighting its way through the thicket, illuminating the scene with a soft, diffused glow. It’s like a photographic impression – a moment captured but also obscured. Look at the upper branches of the trees, the way they lace together, it's like looking at a charcoal drawing. There’s a beauty here, but it’s a fragile one. This reminds me of some of the quiet photography of Karl Blossfeldt, those strange documentations of plants that revealed a whole new world. Both artists manage to find something unsettling, even haunting, in the everyday. It’s in these quiet moments, these subtle shifts in tone, that art truly comes alive.