Viennese Types
Edward Rosser, Editor
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2000 Blind River Editions
ISBN: 0967297508

Emil Mayer -- lawyer & photographer.

Active in Vienna at the turn of the last century, Emil Mayer's photos have been long forgotten as a result of the World War II Holocaust -- most of his original prints were destroyed by the Gestapo after his death, by suicide, in 1938.

One portfolio of his original prints was discovered, held in a private collection until sold at Sotheby's. Lee Gallery in Winchester, Massachusetts had a show to which Edward Rosser went & became entranced by the scenes of that grand old city in 1910, just before the automobile invaded.

The rather blunt title: Viennese Types is Dr. Mayer's surviving masterwork of original prints -- lyrical, meditative, & deeply moving. The prints themselves are bromoil transfers, giving each image the timeless quality of an etching or lithograph.

With a Foreword by Rudolf Arnheim, Edward Rosser unfolds the details of Dr. Emil Mayer's life & times, explaining how societies were in those days before two World Wars. He also describes the particular process, bromoil, which Dr. Mayer used. & then come the plates.

Each demands to be gazed upon with admiration for the details as well as their composition. You can almost feel the fabrics of people's clothes, sense the vitality of the market, smell the horses, leather & tobacco, as everyday people go about their lives.

Plate 3 The Hand Scale is of two women, obviously from different walks of life, bending to the task of weighing something. Peer closely, see the curls of hair, the decoration on the costume, the fringe on the scarf.
Plate 8 Scissor Grinder is of his cart & all his tools. You can almost hear the screeching of metal on stone.
Plate 19 Rear Platform could have been taken in San Francisco before the earthquake. Standing in the back of a tram is the jaunty ticket collector & a woman with a huge plumed hat.
Plate 25 Fortune-Card Seller in sunshine with his parrot on his lapel while a woman looks at something in her hand.
Plate 31 Postman tugs at your heart. An unconsciously grouped threesome absorbed in looking at letters.
Plate 33 Hurry Up! is a scene of impatient passengers, wheels, awnings & a cobbled street.

Viennese Types is a window on a vanished age & is of truly exquisite beauty.

Do read Edward Rosser's Editorial 'Emil Mayer -- Photographer' on how he came upon this exquisite portfolio.

Check out www.emilmayer.com
(01/25/04)

Rebecca