In over four decades, Christa Mayer (b. Bad Kissingen, 1945; lives and works in Berlin) has created a singular photographic oeuvre. The psychologist developed her distinctive progressive creative style in the early 1980s, when she studied at the Berlin Werkstatt für Photographie at Volkshochschule Kreuzberg, where 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.