Vera Mercer (1936)

Vera Mercer

Vera Mercer is a German-born photographer who lives and works in France and the United States.

In the early 1960s she became part of the artistic avant-garde in Paris, which later became known as the "New Realists" (Nouveau Réaliste), photographing movie stars and avant-garde artists of the time. Later she found a new inspiration.

Mercer creates extraordinary large-scale photographic still lifes of food. With the right lighting and carefully chosen compositions of china, cutlery, fruit, seafood and game, Mercer's photographs resemble still lifes in the Dutch Baroque style. With burning candles and artful arrangements, the paintings, flooded with mystical light, are also a reinterpretation of classic vanitas motifs.