The American photographer Vera Mercer's (b. Berlin, 1936; lives and
works in Omaha and Paris) oeuvre defies easy summary. She started taking
pictures in Paris in the 1960s, making portraits of her then husband
Daniel Spoerri--who, like she, was initially training as a dancer--and
other members of the Fluxus group and Nouveaux Réalistes, including
Emmett Williams and Robert Filiou, Jean Tinguely and Jacques Villeglé.
Around the same time, she also photographed Andy Warhol and Marcel
Duchamp for various magazines; her friends Eva Aeppli and Niki de Saint
Phalle were among her favorite sitters. In the 1970s, she took a long
creative hiatus; after moving to Omaha, Nebraska, she poured all her
energy into starting a number of restaurants and developing an entire
downtown neighborhood. But then, in the early years of the new
millennium, she returned to photography, capturing breathtaking
neo-baroque still lifes featuring flowers, fruits, freshly killed game,
antique glasses, and illuminating candles in large formats. Vera
Mercer's fourth monograph presents her most recent opulent still lifes
in color, as well as a novelty in her oeuvre: restrained black-and-white
flower pictures.
