Untitled 1929

This is an undated photograph of a doll by the artist Werner Rohde. What gets me about this image is the way it presents an object as a subject. The doll seems to stare right through you, the lighting giving it a surreal quality. There is something unsettling in the symmetry of its face, and the way the details have been captured, like the fabric texture of its clothing, feels both intimate and a little creepy. I mean, what is it really to ‘capture’ a likeness? What does it mean when the subject is a doll? The overall composition is quite traditional, a straightforward portrait, and it's tempting to compare this to the work of someone like Hans Bellmer, who also made art about dolls, but I think Rohde is doing something quite different here. There's an openness, an invitation to think about what we project onto inanimate objects, and how those projections reflect our own desires and fears. It is art as an ongoing conversation.