Yet his process is never one of mere replication. “I’m not trying to imitate a photograph” he says in one of his notes, “I’m trying to make one. And if I disregard the assumption that a photograph is a piece of paper exposed to light, then I am practicing photography through other means: I’m not producing paintings that remind you of a photograph but producing photographs.” And if the painting that we are looking at really were a photo, then we would have to believe it, because photography, as we know, may be the only art capable of conveying the truth, even when, as in this image and many others by Richter, the subject is barely recognizable.