For her photographic mirror object, Katharina Gruzei takes as her starting point from photographs of an American police archive that she discovered in a book. The pictures show alleged criminals in front and side view, the so-called ‘mug shot’. What is special about them is that the people photographed were not photographed twice, as is usually the case. Instead of the two shots from the front and side, these people have shouldered a mirror that shows the face from both sides. The artist assumes that this is a creative measure to save money by only using up one negative per arrested person.

Starting from this formal anomaly of identification service measures in crime photography, Katharina Gruzei develops her mirror object. She detaches what is discovered in the photographs and brings the improvised mirror into the exhibition space as a photographic object or extended sculpture. Like the neck holder, the mirror has a pragmatic function, which, however, interferes centrally with the outcome of the image and remains visible inside the framing. In Reprise Katharina Gruzei deals once again with the early aids of photography and transfers the object discovered in the images into the here and now. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to shoulder the mirror object as in the photographs. The police mirror thematises the gaze regime within photography - being seen or being looked at - especially since it is transparent from one side and mirrored from the other. The light situation reveals the space behind it or denies the view.

The object made of wood and police mirror (spy glass) refers in its materiality and with its cut-out to the partitions of counters that are familiar to us from various bureaucratic places. The object thus also recalls the role that photography has always played in the persecution and bureaucratization of suspected persons in the course of identification service measures.