"'The photograph becomes a ghost because the costumed mannequin was once alive,' Kracauer wrote in 1927. In that sense, the most haunting image is this newly-minted American standing by the billboard for a roadside attraction, dressed in a suit and tie, hair slightly windblown, expression unconsciously mimicking that of the poster’s stoic Indian chief."
(J. Hoberman, New York Review of Books)
works in Berlin as a freelance writer, publisher and translator. Her doctoral thesis is on the novels of Victor Segalen, and she has translated many of his texts into German. She is currently doing research into archive photos of 20th-century German-language authors and has already published on the photos from Kracauer’s estate.
»Photographs evoke a response in which our sense of beauty and our desire for knowledge interpenetrate; and often they seem esthetically attractive because they satisfy that desire.« Siegfried Kracauer