Life

de Vera Mercer, Matthias Harder

In 2006, Vera Mercer (b. Berlin, 1936; lives and works in Omaha, Nebraska, and Paris) started taking photographs of ravishing still lifes with sumptuous flower arrangements, freshly shot game, and skulls. She occasionally also integrates friends into these theatrical productions, in a nod to her past as a portrait photographer: during her marriage to Daniel Spoerri in Paris, she captured artists in their studios as well as strangers in the city's cafés. This book presents Mercer's most recent creations: affecting and uncompromising tableaux vivants whose composition and palette are without equal. In an interview in 2014, the artist said: "Life and death are two magnificent things. I wish my photographs would convey that even more strongly" Her still lifes are the realization of a lifelong dream. With flowers in full bloom, ripe fruit on the verge of spoiling, and dead creatures, her art is a quintessential memento mori and at once an encomium of life.