Both pathos and distance play a role in the work of Andreas Mühe. In an effort to emphasize the inevitable interaction of these two concepts, the artist chose to link the »Pathos« and »Distance« in the title of this book with the conjunction »as.« Pathos as Distance. Not in the sense of a comparison, as in »as tasty as an apple,« but rather as a transformation of one concept into the other and their mutual dependency. Pathos becomes distance, and this distance becomes a precondition that allows for pathos. Mühe’s themes are often ambiguous, already emotional, and charged by their respective historical context: Christmas trees, chancellors, the chalk cliffs on Rügen, the Obersalzberg.

Andreas Mühe comes from a theatrical family and had also danced a bit on the Berlin Wall when it came down. It is to this upheaval that he owes the fact that he grew up with contrasts, thinks in terms of contradictions, and fed on a hint of dialectics as a substitute for mother’s milk. It is here that he sees the origins of his capability to constantly change perspective and transform pathos into distance. The photographs by Andreas Mühe are accompanied by excerpts from the novel 1913 – The Year before the Storm by Florian Illies.