Whenever Gerhard Richter goes to Sils (Switzerland), he always takes photographs, some of which he paints and adds to his Atlas. Others he considers independent works of art, and has included them in projects such as the exhibition ´Nietzsche Hau in Sils´. In his painted images, a photographed reality is combined with the effects of painting. In these painted photographs, the different levels of reality in the photography interact with others from the painting. The realism (as a photographic representation) and the abstraction (as a painting which is not figurative), show themselves to be redundant when the inherent categories of the created image dissolve into one.