Viennese Types
by Emil Mayer, Edward Rosser
Category: Photography

This book introduces one of the great photographers of our century, Emil Mayer, a turn-of-the-century Viennese street photographer whose prints were largely destroyed by the Gestapo after his suicide in 1938 Viennese Types is Mayer's surviving masterwork, a recently discovered portfolio of original prints that is published here for the first time. It is by any measure one of the most extraordinary collections in the literature of photography -- lyrical, meditative, and deeply moving. Rudolf Arnheim, in the foreword to the book, calls Mayer 'an intimate master.' Others have compared his work to that of Henri Cartier-Bresson. But as Mayer's photographs were taken in the early years of the century, long before those of Cartier-Bresson and other street photographers, this collection is like nothing ever seen before: it is a window on a vanished age, seen through modern eyes. Designed by Carl Zahn, this is a book of truly exquisite beauty.