This work draws on Franz Kafka’s short story The Cares of a Family Man (1919), about a creature called Odradek, part wooden object, part living being, who lurks in the garrets, stairways, and lobbies of buildings, unknown to passers-by. Like Odradek, the invisible and the hidden are significant themes in Wall’s work, from abandoned and neglected places, to socially and politically invisible people.

The atmosphere of this photograph seems to oscillate between the foreboding of film noir and the familiarity of the everyday, the result perhaps of Wall’s deliberate blending of documentary-style photography with aspects of cinematography. ‘I can’t draw a sharp distinction between the prosaic and the spectral, between the factual and the fantastic, and by extension between the documentary and the imaginary,’ he has commented.