The first comprehensive catalogue raisonné of Christa Mayer’s work, bringing together four decades of photography shaped by her dual career as artist and psychotherapist.

Through the course of over four decades, Christa Mayer has created a singular photographic oeuvre. Mayer developed her distinctive style in the early 1980s, when she studied at the Berlin Werkstatt für Photographie at Volkshochschule Kreuzberg, founded by Michael Schmidt; she was among the few women to hold her own in the competitive environment. She soon attracted attention with her unusually intimate and touching portraits from the long-term psychiatric care facility of a Berlin hospital, where she worked for more than two decades as a psychotherapist. 

Released on occasion of Mayer’s eightieth birthday, this catalogue raisonné pays homage to a photographic oeuvre that encompasses major bodies of work like Abwesende (1982–1996), Silvia, Ich will endlich leben (1990), and Mensch und Hase (1994–1996), as well as self-portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and abstract compositions. With contributions by Carolin Förster, Maren Lübbke-Tidow, Barbara Esch Marowski, and Thomas Weski.