Brigitte Maria Mayer

Brigitte Maria Mayer (*  1965 in Regensburg ) is a German photographer , filmmaker and producer . Her work is known for processing mythological and historical material. Her work repeatedly deals with aspects of modernity and religion, but also with topics such as trauma and sexual identity. She lives and works in Berlin.

life and work

After graduating from high school in 1986, Brigitte Mayer went from Regensburg to Kassel and studied photography and performance at the University of Visual Communication (with Floris Michael Neusüss and Harry Kramer ), and graduated in 1990. After finishing her studies, she moves to Berlin. The perspective on the representation of the human body in play with dignity, beauty, pornographic gaze and archetype, which is characteristic of her work, is already reflected in her early photographs. Mayer's first photo book, “Perfect Sister”, is created from these images, which initially stage one's own body. As a result, she discovered Renaissance painting for herself and began to take up related elements in her photographic work. Tableau-like arrangements and body stagings citing that painting anticipate the theme of the examination of modernity and its attachment to the individual, which came back years later. In collaboration with Heiner Müller , who contributes poems, the book "Im Lens des Canova / Perfect Sister 2" is created. At the same time, in the early 1990s, Mayer's work at the theater also took place, where she accompanied Heiner Müller's work with photographs, in the style of Brecht's model books.

From 1995/96 onwards, her process of stylized picture staging in monochrome color spaces (green, orange, blue, white) went crazy. Topics such as trauma and incarnation determine this creative phase. The result is a photographic series of expressive and sculptural arrangements lasting almost ten years that interweave motifs from antiquity and the biblical apocalypse with the present. At the same time, Brigitte Mayer keeps a kind of photographic diary with Polaroid photos, which is published periodically. a. published by Suhrkamp Verlag ( Death is a mistake . Suhrkamp; 2005; ISBN 3-518-41718-5 ).

In 2000 and 2010 she photographed the Passion Play in Oberammergau (in collaboration with Christian Stückl ). The publications on this sell over a hundred thousand times.

Based on these works, Mayer began to produce filmic installations in the mid-noughties, which were shown in many international locations, including "Death is a mistake - Models BRD" (2006) or "Anatomie Titus Fall of Rome" (2009), a work that, in the form of the visual adaptation of a literary material, once again addresses or continues the conflict between tradition and the present, now under new historical circumstances.

In 2009 Brigitte Maria Mayer founded her own production company and embarked on extensive research into her first planned feature film Jesus Cries. Following the idea of ​​a contemporary St. Matthew Passion , she undertakes a two-year journey through Ethiopia with the aim of filming the life of the character Jesus of Nazareth with actors and lay people on site. The project could not be implemented due to massive resistance from the local Orthodox Church and Mayer left the country in 2011. Back in her own culture, she decides to make the film, a contemporary interpretation of the historical figure Jesus Christ, in Germany, with Sabin Tambrea and Emily Cox in the leading roles. After a production phase of more than two years, the film will celebrate its premiere in October 2015 at the Festival de Cine de Bogotá.

Personal

Brigitte Maria Mayer was married to the playwright Heiner Müller from 1992 until his death in 1995 . The daughter Anna comes from the marriage.

literature

• Passion Play 2010 Oberammergau , Prestel Verlag, Munich, London, New York 2010; ISBN 978-3791350240
• Brigitte Maria Mayer, Anatomie Titus / Fall of Rome (catalog for the filmic installation), Verlag Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2009; ISBN 978-3-940737-58-8
• Brigitte Maria Mayer, Heiner Müller: Death is a mistake . Suhrkamp; 2005; ISBN 3-518-41718-5
• Brigitte Maria Mayer, ed. The text is the coyote  : Heiner-Müller-inventory. Suhrkamp, ​​2004; ISBN 3-518-12367-X
• Passion 2000 / Oberammergau , Prestel Verlag, Munich, London, New York 2000; ISBN 3-7913-2272-9
• Brigitte Maria Mayer, Perfect sister. II. , Tübingen: bankruptcy book publisher Claudia Gehrke 1993; ISBN 3-887-69072-9
• Brigitte Maria Mayer, Perfect sister. , Tübingen: bankruptcy book publisher Claudia Gehrke 1991; ISBN 978-3887690526

Filmography

2015 Jesus Cries

Film installations / exhibitions (selection)

“Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome”, 2009, 60 min., Film installation for three screens, with Jeanne Moreau, Erdal Yildiz, Anna Müller (among others based on a Shakespeare adaptation by Heiner Müller): 2012 Theater de la Ville, Paris; 2010 Paul Klee Center, Bern; 2010 Goethe Institute, Los Angeles; 2010 Redcat Theater, Los Angeles; 2009 Spac Performing Arts Center, Shizouka, Japan; 2009 Le Reemdoogo, Ouagadougoo, Burkina Faso; 2009 Herrenhausen Festival "IN BETWEEN", Hanover; 2009 Academy of the Arts, Berlin.

“Death is a mistake”, 2005, 25 min., Film installation for three screens, with Paul Matzke based on texts by Heiner and Inge Müller: 2009 Schauspiel Frankfurt am Main; 2008 Theater Ludwigsburg; 2006 Walhalla near Regensburg, open-air screening

Web links

• Literature by and about Brigitte Maria Mayer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage