Publication
by Margit Zuckriegl
EIKON #126
5/2024, pp. 44–45
In addition to her documentary photo series on the periphery of Vienna from the 1960s, which are among the most important in recent Austrian photographic history, it is the large group of flower images that reveal Elfriede Mejchar to be an idiosyncratic, highly individual photographic artist. Mejchar sees the growth and decay of the flower as an embodiment of time and temporality in general. She does not select a particular moment in time but rather observes an organic process that can be read in the details of the blossoming and fading. Each image represents a stage in the life or death of the flower: A single image contains the germination, budding, sprout ing, blooming, and wilting, right up to the knowledge of the barren remains of the empty inflorescence. Like a drama, spectacular flow ers such as lilies or amaryllis represent the concentrated action as an illustration of the ephemeral. They are, so to speak, the actors on Mejchar’s photographic stage, the performers in the drama she has conceived. The photographer shows the different phases of the plants’ lives with sharply drawn structures, an alternation of light and dark, a pronounced closeup against a neutral background. The color photographs are particularly sensual, even erotic; in addition to the strongly structured lines and contours, they show a coloration that comes close to human incarnation. In the centenary year of her birth, the current exhibitions in Vienna, Salzburg, and Krems, as well as a comprehensive publication, commemorate Elfriede Mejchar, who died in 2020. Today, her flower paintings in particular are more than mere investigations into the growth and decay of the organic; they are historical testimony to Mejchar’s general approach to im agery—including beauty, which she was always on the trail of, and the knowledge of the dangers of trusting beauty alone.
