Andreas Mühe. Stories of Conflict

Andreas Mühe (b. in Karl-Marx-Stadt, present-day Chemnitz, in 1979) is one of Germany’s best-known photo artists. He addresses himself to sociological, historical, and political themes, which he stages in elaborately constructed, dramatically lit settings. His art revolves around breaks in society, violence, and German-German identity, but also interrogations of the self and his own complex family history. The Städel Museum is presenting better and lesser-known series from Mühe’s œuvre. In these works, numbering approximately 45 in all, he explores the formation of identity and the attribution of collective categories such as family, nationality, politics, or culture as constructs of a social order. His portraits of Angela Merkel are iconic: he accompanied the federal chancellor on many of her travels and undertook an in-depth analysis of her poses.