The gaze wanders, almost always passing the viewer to a place outside the picture. It is the presence of absence that Torsten Hattenkerl captures in his portraits of women. Women in the middle of their lives, focused on something, on someone, on the now; in thought, however, perhaps already preoccupied with tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or even yesterday. Forty portraits, divided into two series of black and white enlargements of details and colored long shots, seemingly create closeness – and then distance again, the closer they appear to us. It is the looks of these women that the artist captures. And they are touching.

Torsten Hattenkerl, *1963 in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany. Lives and works in Leipzig.