Kommunale Galerie Berlin Kulturamt Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Hohenzollerndamm 176 10713 Berlin Allemagne
The photographic work of Vera Mercer has remained relatively unknown until now. Born in 1936 in Berlin as Vera Mertz, she received Swiss citizenship following her marriage in 1958 to Daniel Spoerri, then director's assistant at the Darmstadt Landestheater. In the same year, the couple moved to Paris, where they became part of an artistic avant-garde that would become known as the "Nouveaux Réalistes". In the following years, Vera Mercer, who was trained in modern dance and a self-taught photographer, portrayed visual artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Robert Filliou, Niki de Saint-Phalle and Jean Tinguely as well as Daniel Spoerri time and again. Mercer's friendship with Swiss painter and sculptor Eva Aeppli, who was Tinguely's partner in the early 1960s, led to a systematic, decades-long documentation of Aeppli's work, two publications as well as the founding of a small Eva Aeppli-Museum including her "Garden of the Zodiac" in Omaha, Nebraska. According to Mercer, no other artist has influenced her more than Aeppli.
In addition to the portraits that were sometimes realized through magazine commissions, Vera Mercer also photographed on her own initiative sites such as the historic central marketplace in Paris, "Les Halles", shortly before its demolition. The severed head of a cow with eyes half shut, discarded in a metal container, would otherwise make us cringe - in this context however, before a background of butchers in their blood-smeared aprons, the motif seems authentic. Here in "Les Halles" Mercer is directly confronted by a theme that would literally take center stage in her work, even decades later. She photographs food - fruit and vegetables, meat and fish - assembled and arranged at her home studio, and sometimes even cooked in her own kitchen. Her fascination for food in its purest form would consequently led to her opening an own restaurant.
In 1970, Vera moved with her second husband Mark Mercer from Paris to Omaha in the American Midwest. At the encouragement of Mark's father Samuel Mercer as well as Eva Aeppli, Vera provided black and white photographic murals of "Les Halles" for the French Café" being opened in Omaha by Samuel Mercer with designer Cedric Hartmann. The successful combination of the French way of life with American business sense led to further restaurants such as "V. Mertz" (taking Vera's maiden name), "La Buvette," and most recently "The Boiler Room". All are located but a stone's throw from one another in Omaha's Old Market district.