An extravagant alchemist as much as a former Olympic athlete, Michel Medinger (1941–2025) has come to be regarded as one of Luxembourg's most significant photographers. Entirely self-taught, he drew inspiration from the golden age of Dutch painting, while also absorbing the influences of the Surrealists and Dadaists. His deep admiration for classical art and 17th-century vanitas painting shaped his distinctive still-life photography.

A trained chemist who worked in Luxembourg's government laboratories, Medinger developed his own prints, driven by boundless curiosity and a perfectionist's eye. In his darkroom, he experimented relentlessly—exploring a wide array of techniques, crafting his own chemical formulas, and reviving historical printing processes such as cyanotype, Cibachrome, platinotype, solarisation, and Polaroid transfer. He pushed the chromatic potential of selenium and uranium toning to its limits.

Each of his photographs emerges from long contemplation and meticulous staging, built around the extraordinary and whimsical trove of objects he gathered over decades: antique tools, bird skeletons, plastic toys, faded flowers, skulls, trinkets, and even anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables. With humour and a hint of irreverence, he orchestrated these eclectic elements into unexpected encounters. The improbable and often uncanny juxtapositions he conceived give rise to images where fantasy, eroticism, and mortality interlace. By playfully diverting objects from their usual roles, he granted them new symbolic resonance. These “object-actors” disrupt our gaze, spark imagination, and underscore the artist's fascination with the great questions of human existence.

The still lifes he created over more than four decades have become emblematic of Michel Medinger's oeuvre. His allegorical compositions honour the fragility, transience, and enduring beauty of life itself.