Their gaze wanders, nearly always drifting past the observer to a place beyond the photograph. In his portraits of women Torsten Hattenkerl captures the presence of absence. Women in the middle of their lives, focused on something, on someone, on the now; but in their thoughts perhaps already preoccupied with tomorrow, the day after, or even yesterday. Forty portraits, divided into two series of black-and-white detail enlargements and long-shots in colour, create the impression of proximity – and then of distance, the closer they appear. It is the gaze of each of these women that the artist has captured. And it is touching.

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