Fotografie – Das Werk
Christa Mayer
This exhibition presents the work of photographer Christa Mayer from more than four decades. The photographs and video works on display present mostly portraits and landscapes. Christa Mayer is known for her poignant portraits of patients in long-term psychiatric care.
As one of very few women, she honed her artistic style from 1980 onwards at the legendary Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography) in Berlin. In 1987, she received the P.S.1 work scholarship in New York. Soon after, she expanded her area of interest to include healers from various cultural backgrounds. Artists and children serve as important points of inspiration, as do symbolically charged landscapes. During her stays in Italy or Istanbul, Mayer captured everyday impressions of the urban landscape.
Christa Mayer’s work is an expression of a deeply subjective experience and an empathetic engagement with people and places. With her distinctive visual language, she has made sealed-off areas of our lives visible and comprehensible. What is more, she has given expression to the unconscious aspect of our inner worlds as well as the landscapes that surround us.
The exhibition is curated by Carolin Förster.
On December 3, 2025 Distanz Verlag published a monograph of the same name, edited by Carolin Förster and including texts by Carolin Förster, Thomas Weski, Maren Lübbke-Tidow, and Barbara Esch Marowski.
