In Search of Lost Time

What does a life mean in the midst of history? Once photographed by Man Ray, Odette's hands, transformed by age, covered in lines, are now here; rooms once carefully decorated and occupied; albums and torn up photos found in a nursing home bin, an indication of a life documented.

Born in the outskirts of Paris on the day The Great War broke out, Odette set up home in Copenhagen with a Jewish businessman from Poland, fleeing to Sweden during the Second World War. Widowed in her 40s and living as a wealthy independent woman until old age, she slowly lost her memory. She died in a nursing home in July 2006, on her granddaughter Alexandra Buhl’s 30th birthday.