SITTING, STANDING, TARRYING IN THE DREAM OF THE OTHER
A certain déjà-vu may strike any observer of Katharina Gruzei’s icons of daily life: the scenes appear to recall other scenes – even if one is not sure, which ones; or - more strangely - even if one is definitely sure not to have seen any of those other scenes before. Secondness without a first element, as philosophers might call it. A sentence from Dashiell Hammett’s novel “Red Harvest” may give a hint for understanding this paradox: “They were sitting so still as if they wanted to show how still they were sitting.” Exactly in this way, people in Gruzei’s images are not only just there; they rather show something about their being (there). The photographer, proceeding by analogue technique with long exposure, transfers these people, with their help, into tableaux vivants of themselves.
At the same time, Katharina Gruzei’s images make clear that nothing is more revealing about a certain reality than its dreams of a different one: Material traces of remote, collective dreams (such as, for example, the proverbial “American Dream”) are inserted into every intimate, individual environment - functioning at the same time as the attempts of its transgression and as the definitive signature of what it actually is.
Robert Pfaller
Camera Austria Issue 01/2007
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