Vera Mercer LIFE

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