Angelika Rinnhofer

She’s tough. Her body is slight. And yet, she bore seven children. She takes her camera everywhere. She teaches photography, and maybe it was she who mentioned to me once “every photography student begins by taking pictures of her feet.” She was not a student when she took the image of her feet. She did not have to affirm her presence as the author of the picture. This is not a photograph of her converse-clad feet on the bottom edge of an awkward composition. Instead, the pose of her resting feet recalls Jesus’ pierced feet in medieval paintings of the crucifixion. Traces of chipped-off, bright-red nail polish, her delicate, sun-tanned skin, and the softness of the white bed sheet and her striped nightgown against a black background bring this image back to me, into the present, affixing her being as my friend and mentor.