"Figure"

gelatin silver print

signed recto

The unknown photographer Josephus Daniel transforms the human body into a play of light and shadow. The photograph abstracts the female form into an almost landscape-like structure—sensual and anonymous at the same time. The radical reduction to sparse light gradients and contours creates a timeless image of calm and intimacy. The staging questions conventional viewing regimes and shows the body not as an object, but as a sensation that has taken form. The title Figure underlines the ambivalence between body and abstraction.
(Christoph Fuchs)