His work is defined by his examination of fractures in society, violence, and German-German identity, as well as his questioning of himself and his own complex family history. From February 16 to June 19, 2022, the Städel Museum will present well-known and unknown work cycles from the photographer's oeuvre. In the approximately 45 works, Mühe deals with attribution to collective categories such as family, nationality, politics, or culture as a construct of a social order. Iconic are Mühe's portraits of Angela Merkel, whom he accompanied on several trips as German chancellor and whose poses he analyzed in a catchy way. The extent to which these photographs are determined by a political visual language becomes clear in other photographs of the chancellor, in which the photo artist's mother can be seen as a deceptively real double. What is real, what is staged, becomes blurred - both in the official and in the re-enacted photographs. Even Mühle's houses of the SED leadership photographed in Wandlitz look like dummies in the dark surroundings and do not reveal their historical role. Mühle's pictorial worlds are conundrums whose aesthetic is always ambiguous. He is not looking for images, but images in which he can reinterpret the given content - people, architecture, or landscapes.
