#John Maloof

[tilbageidanmark]

Vivian Maier - Chicago, 1978.

[kodachrome-net]

The negative is comparable to the composer's score, and the print to its performance.

Ansel Adams, quoted in Viviane Maier: A Photographer Found, by John Maloof and Marvin Heiferman

[unrighteousbooks]

Sometimes we are unaware of the people around us. Now and then, they reappear unexpectedly. That is the case with Vivian Maier. This book, by John Maloof and the Howard Greenberg Gallery, contains an exceptional collection of Maier's photography. She passed away in 2009, and her work was all but unknown during her lifetime. This book was first published by Harper Design in 2014. Meanwhile, When the Gods Are Silent, by Mikhail Soloviev, which made an appearance in one of Maier's photos from 1954, can still be found in bookstores such as Aziraphale's Books.

[paolo-streito-1264]

Vivian Maier. John Maloof Collection, October 18, 1953, New York City.

[impressivepress]

Meet Vivian Maier, the Reclusive Nanny Who Secretly Became One of the Best Street Photographers of the 20th Century

The self-taught artist is getting her first museum exhibition in New York City, where she nurtured her nascent interest in photography.

Vivian Maier took more than 150,000 photographs as she scoured the streets of New York and Chicago. She rarely looked at them; often, she didn’t even develop the negatives. Without any formal training, she created a sprawling body of work that demonstrated a wholly original way of looking at the world. Today, she is considered one of the best street photographers of the 20th century.

Maier’s photos provide audiences with a tantalizing peek behind the curtain into a remarkable mind. But she never intended to have an audience. A nanny by trade, she rarely showed anyone her prints. In her final years, she stashed five decades of work in storage lockers, which she eventually stopped paying for. Their contents went to auction in 2007.

Many of Maier’s photos ended up with amateur historian John Maloof, who purchased 30,000 negatives for about $400. In the years that followed, he sought out other collectors who had purchased boxes from the same lockers. He didn’t learn the photographer’s identity until 2009, when he found her name scrawled on an envelope among the negatives. A quick Google search revealed that Maier had died just a few days earlier. Uncertain of how to proceed, Maloof started posting her images online.

“I guess my question is, what do I do with this stuff?” he wrote in a Flickr post. “Is this type of work worthy of exhibitions, a book? Or do bodies of work like this come up often? Any direction would be great.”

Maier quickly became a sensation. Everyone wanted to know about the recluse who had so adeptly captured 20th-century America. Her life and work have since been the subject of a best-selling book, a documentary and exhibitions around the world.

Now, the self-taught photographer is headlining her first major American retrospective. “Vivian Maier: Unseen Work,” which is currently on view at Fotografiska New York, features some 230 pieces from the 1950s through the 1990s, including black-and-white and color photos, vintage and modern prints, films, and sound recordings. The show is also billed as the first museum exhibition in Maier’s hometown, the city where she nurtured her nascent interest in photography.

Born in New York City in 1926, Maier grew up mostly in France, where she began experimenting with a Kodak Brownie, an affordable early camera designed for amateurs. After returning to New York in 1951, she purchased a Rolleiflex, a high-end camera held at the waist, and began developing her signature style: images of everyday life framed with a stark humor and intuitive understanding of human emotion. She started working as a governess, a role that allowed her to spend hours wandering the city, children in tow, as she snapped away.

She left New York about five years later, when she secured a job as a nanny for three boys—John, Lane and Matthew Gensburg—in the Chicago suburbs. The family was devoted to Maier, though they knew very little about her. The boys remember attending art films and picking wild strawberries as her charges, but they don’t recall her ever mentioning any family or friends. Their parents knew that Maier traveled—they would hire a replacement nanny in her absence—but they didn’t know where she went.

“You really wouldn’t ask her about it at all,” Nancy Gensburg, the boys’ mother, told Chicago magazine in 2010. “I mean, you could, but she was private. Period.”

Despite Maier’s reclusive tendencies, the Gensburgs knew about her photography. It would have been difficult to hide. After all, she lived with the family and had a private bathroom, which she used as a darkroom to develop black-and-white photos herself. The Gensburgs frequently witnessed her taking photos; on rare occasions, she even showed them her prints.

Maier stayed with the Gensburgs until the early 1970s, when the boys were too old for a nanny. She spent the next few decades working in other caretaking roles, though she doesn’t appear to have developed a similar relationship with these families, who viewed her as a competent caregiver with an eccentric personality. Most never saw her prints, though they do remember her moving into their homes with hundreds of boxes of photos in tow.

“I once saw her taking a picture inside a refuse can,” talk show host Phil Donahue, who employed Maier as a nanny for less than a year, told Chicago magazine. “I never remotely thought that what she was doing would have some special artistic value.”

Meanwhile, the Gensburgs kept in touch. As Maier grew older, they took care of her, eventually moving her to a nursing home. They never knew about the storage lockers. When she died at age 83, a short obituary appeared in the Chicago Tribune, describing her as a “second mother” to the three boys, a “free and kindred spirit,” and a “movie critic and photographer extraordinaire.”

Maier’s mysterious backstory is a large part of her present-day appeal. Fans are captivated by the photos, but they’re also intrigued by the reclusive nanny who developed her talents in secret. “Vivian Maier the mystery, the discovery and the work—those three parts together are difficult to separate,” Anne Morin, curator of the new exhibition, tells CNN.

The show is meant to focus on the work rather than the mystery. As Morin says to the Art Newspaper, she hopes to avoid “imposing an overexposed interpretation of her character.” Instead, the exhibition aims to elevate Maier’s name to the level of other famous street photographers—such as Robert Frank and Diane Arbus—and take on the daunting task of examining her large oeuvre.

“In ten years, we could do another completely different show,” Morin tells CNN. “She has more than enough material to bring to the table.”

The subjects of Maier’s street photos ran the gamut, but she often turned her lens toward “people on the margins of society who weren’t usually photographed and of whom images were rarely published,” per a statement from Fotografiska New York. The Gensburg boys recall her taking them all over the city, adamant that they witness what life was like beyond the confines of their affluent suburb.

The exhibition is organized thematically, with sections devoted to Maier’s famous street photos, her experimental abstract compositions and her stylized self-portraits. The self-portraits, which frequently incorporate mirrors and reflections, amplify her enigmatic qualities, usually showing her with a deadpan, focused expression. Her voice can be heard in numerous audio recordings, which play throughout the exhibition. As such, even as the show focuses on the work, Maier the person is still a frequent presence in it.

“The paradox of Vivian Maier is that the lifetime of anonymity that has captured the public imagination persists in the work,” writes art critic Arthur Lubow for the New York Times, adding, “An artist uses a camera as a tool of self-expression. Maier was a supremely gifted chameleon. After immersing myself in her work, other than detecting a certain wryness, I could not get much sense of her sensibility.”

The artist undoubtedly possessed a curiosity about her immediate surroundings, which she photographed with a “lack of self-consciousness,” Sophie Wright, the New York museum’s director, tells CNN. “There’s no audience in mind.” There is no evidence that Maier wondered about her viewers—or that she ever imagined having viewers in the first place. They, however, will never stop wondering about her.

~ Ellen Wexler, Assistant Editor, Humanities · July 9, 2024.

[eucanthos]

Vivian Maier   (US, 1926 - 2009)

Self-Portrait, 1955

Short bio of wonder [edited]

American of French and Austro-Hungarian extraction, intensely guarded and private, decidedly unmaterialistic (money-wise), Vivian would amass found items, art books, newspaper clippings, home films and thankfully her negatives. She recorded the 2nd 1\2 of the 20th c. Urban America, creating masterpieces of Street Photography.

Maier would leave behind over 100,000 negatives and a series of homemade documentary films and audio recordings.

Having picked up photography in Europe 2 years earlier, came back to New York City in 1951, where she would comb the streets. In 1956 Vivian left for Chicago, where she’d spend most of the rest of her life working as a Nanny and “quietly” taking pictures.

Her first camera was a modest Kodak Brownie (one shutter speed, no aperture and focus control) soon to be replaced in 1952 by her first (of many) Rolleiflex. She later also used a Leica IIIc, an Ihagee Exakta, a Zeiss Contarex and various other SLR cameras.

Maier’s massive body of work would come to light when in 2007 at a local thrift auction house on Chicago’s Northwest Side. John Maloof discovered, championed and archived her work. Now, with roughly 90% of her work reconstructed and cataloged, it's available to the public.

https://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/self-portraits/#slide-13

https://www.vivianmaier.com/about-vivian-maier/

[libraryofjoy]

Books read in September of 2023

Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk. Fiction: historical. A fictional island in the Ottoman Empire inhabited by a Muslim and Greek Orthodox population is left to fend for itself after a plague becomes uncontrollable. This book was long and intricate. Despite the historical setting, the dysfunctional government and religious conflict exacerbating the damage of a plague felt a little too close ot home.

The Confessions of St Augustine. Nonfiction: autobiographical, religious. Augustine's life story and theology. A lot more about time than I would've expected. Sometimes I think he's overdramatic or unhelpful, but then sometimes I'm amazed at his devotion and love for God. Augustine is early enough and influential enough that he's probably going to be vaguely relevant to my studies at some point, so it made sense to read the Confessions.

When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar. Fiction: contemporary, maybe a bit of poetry? This book tells the story of three orphaned sisters who have to make a life for themselves, under the neglect and abuse of their guardian uncle, negotiating issues like the immigration status of their family members, gender and sexuality, and living as Muslims when their access to Muslim community is restricted.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Fiction: speculative, dystopian. On an island where things keep disappearing, people who don't forget the disappearing items face persecution from their government. As life gets bleaker and more mundane, the characters of this book resist in small, subtle bursts of color and joy.

Where Reason Ends by Yiyun Li. Fiction: autobiographical, contemporary. A mother has a conversation with her dead teenage son after he commits suicide.

The Age of Wood by Roland Ennos. Nonfiction: history, nature. This book traces how wood has been used throughout history. This book paired well with Teaching the Trees by Joan Maloof, which I read earlier this year.

The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Fiction: romance. When a 29-year-old woman is told that she only has a year to live, she decides to defy her relatives' expectations and live on her own terms. I found Valancy so deeply relatable that it was a delight to see her crafting the life she wanted. The plot twists in this book are ah... big and melodramatic. I don't think this is LMM's tightest work from a craft perspective, but it was a really enjoyable book and I'd recommend it to my fellow lonely spinsters (with the caveat that it is a romance :/ )

Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga. Fiction: historical, contemporary, postcolonial. This book follows a Rwandan village through several generations of religious developments in response to Christian missionaries. This book is critical of missionary colonization in ways that are similar to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe or The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I thought the various ways in which characters made sense of Christianity in light of their largely banned yet profoundly present preexisting belief stories was really remarkable.

Oranges by John McPhee. Nonfiction: agriculture, travel. There was a lot of fascinating information about how oranges get to consumers, albeit probably a few decades out of date.

No god but God by Reza Aslan. Nonfiction: history, religion. This book traces the origins and history of Islam. It was published in 2009 and does make some conscious effort to be an apologetic for Islam to a hostile post-911 society. This is one of the books I'm reading to make up for the Islam in America class I had to drop from this semester.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Fiction: contemporary. When their newborn son's prospective name is lost in the mail, a Desi couple living in New England resort to naming him after Russian author Nikolai Gogol, a decision that shapes the trajectory of their son's life.

When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson. Nonfiction: religion, sociology, economics. This is a collection of essays. I really appreciate the way Marilynne Robinson writes about the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. I highly recommend this book for Christians who would like to avoid inadvertent antisemitism.

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. Fiction: contemporary, speculative? This book follows a loving but dysfunctional family of four, each of whom wrestles with religious identity and purpose. There are spelling bees, kaleidoscopes, Jewish mysticism, and the inescapable strain of parent-child relationships caused by individual exploration of faith.

I'm happy to give content warnings for any of these! I really tried to push myself this month, and I feel like it paid off. I managed to get a few books off the really dusty and abandoned depths of my TBR list.

Fiction: 8

Nonfiction: 5

Total books this month: 13

Total fiction this year: 30

Total nonfiction this year: 36

[stricklandvintagewatches]

If you love fine photography as much as we do, you must treat yourself to the documentary, “Finding Vivian Maier.” Written and directed by John Maloof, the young man who discovered her work, it is an attempt to find out about the reclusive Chicago nanny whose images are considered by many to be the finest street photography of the 20th century. Her images – all 200,000 of them – were discovered as negatives and undeveloped rolls of film at an abandoned storage locker sale. The documentary is a fine work in its own right. The above undated image of a Chicago street urchin with watch, along with other examples of Ms. Maier’s art and the documentary, “Finding Vivian Maier,“ can be found here:  http://www.vivianmaier.com/  http://goo.gl/tdwKlz

[nacentart]

Vivian Maier Photographer Streets Ahead

Vivian Maier was a remarkable American street photographer whose 150,000 negatives that she took over a 50 year period were stored away and left unseen until after Maier’s death in 2009, at the age of 83. With the timely emergence of internet picture sites, Maier’s street photography was discovered, thanks to Chicago-based picture collectors such as John Maloof and Ron Slattery. Since then, Maier’s work has become the subject of worldwide interest with books, documentaries, and exhibitions being made about her life, in particular, the excellent 2014 documentary Finding Vivian Maier, which was also nominated for best documentary at the Oscars. Maier spent her youth between the United States and France before moving back to New York in 1951, primarily working as a nanny for most of her life. It is hard to know where to start with Maier’s work, it is so varied but ultimately would be an understatement to say Maier’s photographs do not feel like someone's old attic box brownie family photographs, although Maier did start her photography with a single shutter Brownie. Maier turns the everyday life that surrounded her in cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York into individual vignettes of films never made. Her best-known work represents the streets of New York and Chicago in the 1950s and 60s.

Maier often took self-portraits or photographs of her own shadow. In many of her self-portraits, Maier is reflected in the glass of a window or a blown-up shadow on a distant wall. I think Maier occasionally wants to be part of her own record but there is an unsureness that I can relate to; she is there but not there. Occasionally she is bold, and her reflection is captured in a window, sometimes revealed like a spectral presence, other times she is starkly represented in the reflection of a mirror that someone is carrying in the street. I love Maier’s self-portrait mirror shots; I feel I become her in that moment. I am transitorily there at the point where the shutter fleetingly opens to capture the light. One can see the scene Maier wants to capture and the capturer.  Maier had such a great eye for trapping split-second dramas, be it a nun getting wheeled out on a stretcher, a man’s feet emerging and poking underneath a shop window blind, surrounded by food tins, or a film premiere with Kirk Douglas. Maier would walk around on her days off from nannying, traversing the windy streets from the upmarket to the poor areas of town. Nothing was off-subject, and it is a remarkable body of work.

Great care has also been taken in printing Maier’s negatives. A lot of images including the images from the official website were not originally printed by Maier and much debate about how a photographer wants to portray in physical form their negatives was studied in Maier’s case. According to the official website for Maier, Maier’s own printed photographs were examined, and notes were given to labs on how to crop and print etc, were used. One thing is sure, I am grateful that this valuable and significant archive of twentieth-century life was saved, but it does not just represent twentieth-century life. It is far from just a documentation of how we used to live. There is great artistry in Maier’s ability to find deeply humane moments in people's lives and somehow also turn each moment into the most important scene of the play or film.  

Photographs of some of the poor areas and people are very powerful and Maier does not look away from their obvious suffering. It also shows Maier’s own humanity in documenting their struggles, I think that comes across in her work. She had a real kinship with those who were destitute. Maier was a socialist and feminist and, ironically, Maier would also find herself struggling in the last decades of her life and, at some point, did become homeless. Fortunately, some of Maier’s former children, whom she looked after, came together to help her find a small apartment to live in. Maier’s negatives were eventually sold off to pay off debts in 2007, two years before she died, and eventually were sold to collectors such as John Maloof who have taken great care in helping to get Maier’s work in the public domain. Maier was a very guarded and private person in her life. We do not know how she would view her newfound fame, but I for one am happy that I have had the opportunity to see some of Vivian Maier’s astounding work.

[learabeau]

Liste culturelle 2023

JANVIER

LIVRES

Le mur invisible de Marlen Haushofer

Histoire du Protestantisme de Jean Baudérot

FILMS

Godland de Hlynur Palmason

Dune de Denis Villeneuve

FEVRIER

SERIES

Tuca and Bertie de Lisa Hanawalt

Demon Slayer de Koyoharu Gotoge

FILMS

Le Retour des hirondelles de Li Ruijun

Wasabi de Gérald Krawczyk

All of Them Witches de Mona Panchal

LIVRES

Chaque geste compte. Manifeste contre l'impuissance publique de Dominique Bourg et Johann Chapoutot

La cabane magique. Panique à Pompéi de Mary Pope Osborne

Assassination classroom de Yusei Matsui

MARS

SERIES

Hollywood de Ryan Murphy

Supernatural de Eric Kripke

LIVRE

L’existentialisme est un humanisme de Jean-Paul Sartre

FILM

Fight Club de David Fincher

AVRIL

LIVRES

Peter Pan de Barrie

Informal beauty. The photograhs of Paul Nash de Simon Grant

Perceptions de Nathalie Man

La société des personnes vulnérables. Leçons féministes d’une crise. de Najat Vallaud-Belkacem et Sandra Laugier

Les hommes sont absents de Nathalie Man

FILMS

Bullet Train de David Leitch

Atonement de Joe Wright

Porco Rosso de Hayao Miyazaki

BlacKKKlansman de Spike Lee

Hokusai de Hajime Hashimoto

MAI

FILMS

It follows de David Robert Mitchell

Midsommar de Ari Aster

Little women de Greta Gerwig

Guardians of the Galaxy. Vol.3 de James Gunn

LIVRES

Le chat noir et autres histoires de Edgar Allan Poe

Déclaration des droits de la femme et du citoyen de Olympe de Gouges

JUIN

LIVRES

Émotions, souffrance, délivrance de Doctor Tuan Anh Tran

Capital: Vientiane de Guez, Pichelin and Troub's

Something to hide. Exploration des messages cachés du rock de Diego Gil et Johann Guyot

FILMS

Air de Ben Affleck

Eating our way to extinction de Kate Winslet

Susan, jour après jour de Stéphane Manchematin et Serge Steyer

Palm Springs de Marx Barbakow

Mike and Dave need wedding dates de Jake Szymanski

Clueless de Amy Heckerling

Spider-Man : Across the Spider-Verse de Joaquim dos Santos, Kemp Powers et Justin K.Thompson

JUILLET

LIVRES

Bathory. La comtesse maudite d'Anne-Perrine Couet

Une rainette en automne (et plus…) de Linnea Sterte

FILMS

Prisoners de Denis Villeneuve

Tarzan de Kevin Lima et Chris Buck

Turning Red de Domee Shi

AOUT

FILMS

Mercenaire de Sacha Wolff

Behind every good man de Nikolai Ursin

The Fast and the Furious de Rob Cohen

Born behind stones de Carina Freire

Lands that Rises and Descends de Moona Pennanen

LIVRE

Des âmes et des saisons : Psycho-écologie de Boris Cyrulnik

SEPTEMBRE

FILMS

Body Samples de Astrid de la Chapelle

Galb'Echaouf d'Abdessamad El Montassir

La ciudad de los fotógrafos de Sebastian Moreno

Happiest Season de Clea DuVall

En communauté de Camille Octobre Laperche

Barbie de Greta Gerwig

Encanto de Byron Howard et Jared Bush

Mon amour, mon ami d'Adriano Valerio

Bottoms d'Emma Seligman

LIVRES

Lettres à un jeune poète de Rainer Maria Rilke

Ich de Martina Weinhart

Poèmes à la nuit de Rainer Maria Rilke

SERIE

Downtown Abbey d'après l'oeuvre de Julian Fellowes

OCTOBRE

FILMS

Downtown Abbey de Michael Engler

Downtown Abbey : Une nouvelle ère de Simon Curtis

Sur le rocher de Sandrine Rouxel

Dangereuse Alliance d'Andrew Fleming

Folie douce, folie dure de Marine Laclotte

The Craft : Les Nouvelles sorcières de Zoe Lister-Jones

Trois mille ans à t'attendre de George Miller

The Crow d'Alex Proyas

Le jardin des planches de Monique Barrière

On vous parle du Chili : Ce que disait Allende de Chris Marker et Miguel Littin

LIVRES

L’œil et l'Esprit de Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Vivian Maier en toute discrétion de Françoise Perron

Des histoires vraies de Sophie Calle

Henri Cartier-Bresson des collections Photo Poche et introduction écrite par Jean Clair

Palm Springs 1960 - Robert Doisneau par Jean-Paul Dubois

Vivian Maier Self-Portraits de John Maloof et Elizabeth Avedon

NOVEMBRE

FILMS

Crimson Peak de Guillermo del Toro

Astérix et Obélix. Mission Cléopâtre d'Alain Chabat

Le Garçon et le Héron d'Hayao Miyazaki

Hamama & Caluna d'Andreas Muggli

Journal de Sébastien Laudenbach

In Paris Parks de Shirley Clarke

LIVRES

Ces hommes qui m'expliquent la vie de Rebecca Solnit

Pulp Poiesis : Écriture(s) en suspens(ion) d'Alizée Pichot

Enfant de la nuit polaire de Julia Nikitina

DECEMBRE

LIVRES

Nouveaux poèmes suivi de Requiem par Rainer Maria Rilke

Pampilles de Florentine Rey

Notes sur la mélodie des choses et autres textes de Rainer Maria Rilke

FILMS

Willy's Wonderland de Kevin Lewis

Family Switch de Joseph McGinty Nichol

Skyscraper de Shirley Clarke

Le monde après nous de Sam Esmail

Sensitive Content de Narges Kalhor

Snow Job : the Media Hyteria of Aids de Barbara Hammer

They Are Lost to Vision Altogether de Tom Kalin

Autour d'eux, la nuit de Vassili Schémann

Blight de John Smith

Tér d'Istvan Szabo

Chicken Run : La Menace nuggets de Sam Fell

SERIE

Lupin de George Kay et François Uzan

[mozgoderina]

Vivian Maier: The Creative Personality Versus the Persona

— Written by: John Paul Jonas

In New York, the retrospective of Miss Vivian Maier (1926-2009), titled “Unseen Work,” recently concluded. The exhibition was open to visitors from May 31 to September 29, 2024, at the “Fotografiska New York” museum. The showcase included around 230 works covering the period from the early 1950s to the late 1990s, featuring many previously unseen photographs.

The exhibition highlighted Miss Maier's distinctive style and her extraordinary ability to capture the essence of everyday life through an artistic lens. It is part of a larger effort to bring her work to a wider audience, especially considering that her vast body of work was only discovered posthumously, yet it is already considered one of the most important contributions to 20th-century photography.

Organized in partnership with cultural institutions such as the John Maloof Collection in Chicago and the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, this retrospective is part of an international tour that began in Paris in 2021.

Over the past 15 years, since the discovery of her archive, Miss Maier’s remarkable life story has captivated the international art community. Why?

Miss Maier was an American street photographer of French descent, born in 1926 in New York. She spent most of her life working as a nanny in Chicago. During her time off or on walks with the children she cared for, she dedicated herself to photographing the urban life around her, capturing candid and unfiltered moments of city life.

Although she remained unknown during her lifetime, her extensive archive—comprising over 150,000 negatives—was discovered in 2007 when Mr. John Maloof acquired the majority of her work at an auction. Fascinated by his discovery, Mr. Maloof became the driving force behind promoting her photographs, leading to the production of the Oscar-nominated documentary Finding Vivian Maier in 2013. Since then, interest in her extraordinary life and work has only grown. Following years of research, two comprehensive biographies have been published: Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife by Pamela Bannos in 2017 and Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story of the Photographer Nanny by Ann Marks in 2021.

In his renowned work On Liberty, John Stuart Mill reminds us: “Among the works of man, which human life is rightly devoted to perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself.” This observation aptly applies to the life and work of Miss Vivian Maier.

Anne Morin, curator of the exhibition Vivian Maier: A Photographic Revelation, shown across Europe, claims that Miss Maier is “one of the top street photographers, ever.” “Her story is definitely amazing, but I have to work hard to keep it separate from the physical reality of her photographs.” (Morin, as cited in Casper, 2014) [1] While I have no doubt about the sincerity of this intention, I fear such efforts may be in vain. Miss Maier’s most significant achievement is, indeed, her extraordinary life story. The art of photography forms the backbone of this narrative. It gave meaning to an otherwise unremarkable life—perhaps the highest gift art can bestow upon its creator.

“When we are involved in [creativity], we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life,” observes Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, adding, “Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done.” [2] For an artist, separation from their art is a kind of torment, a confrontation with the meaninglessness of existence. When Miss Maier’s photographic walks ended in success, her daily duties as a nanny likely became less tedious and futile. The world’s imposed tasks could be viewed as necessary preparations for the next round of creation. A reasonable compromise.

Professor Csikszentmihalyi also suggests that no one can be both exceptional and normal at the same time. Miss Maier separated these two aspects of her life for the sake of survival—a creative compromise. For those around her, including the families she worked for, she presented herself as an unmarried yet proud modern woman, unusually interested in various aspects of contemporary life. “The personal accounts from people who knew Vivian are all very similar. She was eccentric, strong, heavily opinionated, highly intellectual, and intensely private. She wore a floppy hat, a long dress, wool coat, and men’s shoes and walked with a powerful stride.” [3]

Well-informed and empathetic toward the oppressed, she was diligent in imparting knowledge to her charges, often addressing challenging topics. Their walks included visits to impoverished parts of the city, with open discussions about current issues. Some audio recordings of these conversations, conducted in the form of interviews, were found among the artist's belongings. Similar efforts are confirmed by Mrs. Nancy Gensburg of Highland Park, whose three sons (John, Lane, and Matthew) were cared for by Miss Maier: “She wanted them to be very aware of what was going on in the world.” [4]

The artist’s identity intertwines significantly with her role as a caregiver, a profession that financially sustains both sides of her life. This unusual nanny finds ways to navigate the demands of daily life. At this stage, the dichotomy between her two personas isn’t yet fully expressed. It even seems that, in a harmonious blend, the creative personality might enrich the life and professional standing of the governess. As a photographer, she grants herself permission to dedicate valuable time, energy, and resources to a project that, at the very least, jeopardizes the practical survival of her career as a childcare provider. Always seeking knowledge and intellectual challenges, the artist approaches her vocation with both dedication and apparent detachment. “She captured politicians on the campaign trail (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, LBJ); celebrities at premieres or out in the wild (Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn); laborers and commuters; drunks, criminals, and down-and-outs; flâneurs [*] and well-coiffed women in furs”. [5]

The initial enthusiasm seems well-balanced and clearly directed. The financial support that Miss Maier manages to secure through her profession as a governess is apparently supplemented by a modest family inheritance. It appears that resources to fuel her creative spark are not lacking—quite the opposite. She frequently takes advantage of opportunities for extensive travel, during which she further broadens her intellectual horizons. These odysseys stand in stark contrast to the otherwise modest habits of the nanny. “Her thirst to be cultured led her around the globe. At this point we know of trips to Canada in 1951 and 1955, in 1957 to South America, in 1959 to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, in 1960 to Florida, in 1965 she’d travel to the Caribbean Islands, and so on. It is to be noted that she traveled alone and gravitated toward the less fortunate in society”. [3] The families she worked for generally viewed such excursions with leniency, tolerating the whims of their young, unmarried, and headstrong caregiver. “If she wanted to go, she’d just get up and go,” Nancy recalls. “The family would hire a temporary replacement while Maier was away; she never said where she was headed”. [4]

During her creative expeditions across the globe, Miss Maier photographed tirelessly. It is likely that during this period of intense travel and creative freedom, a strong artistic personality fully took shape. The desire for unrestricted movement and an independent choice of vocation remained powerful even upon her return to the role of governess. The families she worked for began to sense a shift in her approach to daily duties; unfortunately, the other Miss Maier—sensitive, original, and above all, productive—became inaccessible, even to those closest to her. “She really wasn’t interested in being a nanny at all,” Nancy Gensburg says. “But she didn’t know how to do anything else.” [4] The second part of this statement now seems both untrue and harsh. Many creative individuals who were not recognized in their own time face similar misconceptions. In Miss Maier’s case, we ask ourselves to what extent the artist herself is responsible for hiding her achievements from public view.

Based on the relatively sparse evidence currently available, we conclude that Miss Maier’s early creative work was far more visible and accessible, at least to those in her immediate surroundings. “There’s one family in New York that has hundreds of vintage Vivian photographs. In Chicago, she’d give people like two at the most. So she was much more generous and open with her photography in New York.” (Marks, as cited in Reid, 2021) [6]

It is evident that the pressures of daily life grew stronger with time. The creative personality would occasionally retreat, and the artist often made concessions. For example, in her creative process, she gradually abandoned post-production. The selection and processing of photographs, printing reproductions, and even developing negatives became increasingly unavailable luxuries. “In 1956, when Maier moved to Chicago, she enjoyed the luxury of a darkroom as well as a private bathroom. This allowed her to process her prints and develop her own rolls of B&W film.” [3] This convenience extended her control over the creative process—from capturing the image to developing the prints. The initiative of transforming her bathroom and sacrificing personal comfort demonstrates her deep commitment to accessing resources scarce for an artist in the social role of a nanny. Miss Maier consistently exhibited an undeniable dedication to learning, refining her artistic methods, and perfecting her technique. It wasn’t merely an exploration of her own vision of the world through the lens, but a sincere effort to realize, materialize, and ultimately present that vision to the people around her.

The seriousness of her intention to make some income from photography is evident in the fact that a number of her works were prepared for sale during post-production. “If you wanted a picture,” Nancy says, “you had to buy it. But Maier wasn’t selling her photography for profit. Someone had to want it more than she wanted it. It’s like an artist who would paint something and then hate to get rid of it. She loved everything she did.” [4] I doubt the comparison to a painter is quite fitting. We know that photographs can be reproduced an unlimited number of times. For similar reasons, visual artists create graphic works. Each print is authentic because it bears the artist's signature and a unique serial number from a limited edition. It’s likely that behind this apparent reluctance to sell her work lay different motivations. Perhaps Miss Maier wasn’t yet ready for this form of commerce—without an official representative, gallery, or agent who could properly assess the specific value. If that’s the case, maybe she was still waiting for the right opportunity to present herself to the world ‘the proper way.’ Perhaps the value she sought to achieve in the eyes of her contemporaries wasn’t financial. She was aware of her talent but lacked recognition.

Unfortunately, her working conditions during the later period were not as favorable. "As she would move from family to family, her rolls of undeveloped, unprinted work began to collect." [3] The creative process was diminished. From this period, the stereotype of the artist who creates out of an inner necessity, without any clear intention of sharing their work with the world, began to emerge. This complex dynamic between dedication to the art and neglect of the result creates the popular narrative about Miss Maier’s rich and self-sufficient inner world. Sophie Wright, the New York museum’s director, tells CNN: “There’s no audience in mind. There is no evidence that Maier wondered about her viewers—or that she ever imagined having viewers in the first place.” (Wright, as cited in Wexler, 2024) [7]

Professor Csikszentmihalyi reminds us that creative people are often intelligent but, at the same time, extremely naive. It is likely that the refined cultural habits she developed played a role in shaping and protecting her creative self. However, these habits also created a clear separation between her artistic identity and her social persona. This unintentional division left her vulnerable, deprived of understanding and support from the ‘ordinary’ world. “I once saw her taking a picture inside a refuse can,” talk show host Phil Donahue, who employed Maier as a nanny for less than a year, told Chicago magazine. “I never remotely thought that what she was doing would have some special artistic value.” (Donahue, as cited in Wexler, 2024) [7]

However, Miss Maier did not allow people or circumstances to take away her initial creative spark and authentic raison d’être. The boundary was clearly drawn on that front. “Her relationship with the world occurred through the camera, through the process of photographing/filming her surroundings,” comments Anne Morin, adding, “But once the recording was finished, she wasn’t as interested in looking at the result.” (Morin, as cited in Casper, 2014) [1]

The truth is, we will never know how painful the concessions to reality were. Was the act of photographing alone enough for Miss Maier? Could she truly choose? Or were choices made on her behalf by social and economic circumstances, as well as her marginalized position? While she carefully observed the world, no one saw her work after the photographs were taken—not even the artist herself.

It seems that the transition to color photography finally marked the quiet abandonment of any plan to enter the artistic scene, if such an intention ever existed. “Her color photographs focus on the musicality of the image, the forms, the density of the colors. She was really working in the medium of color when she took color photographs. In her black-and-white work, her focus seems to be on her subjects, the people pictured.” (Morin, as cited in Kasper, 2014) [1]

During this later period, faces gradually disappear from her photographs, giving way to abstract compositions in vibrant colors. Their artistic value is not diminished, but the sensibility has changed. If she had failed to connect with her contemporaries by skillfully capturing their portraits in scenes from everyday life familiar to everyone, that chance was certainly reduced by her prevailing choice of new subjects. In the bustling urban environment, there were plenty of themes, and Miss Maier gave due attention to each, despite the evident divergence from popular taste. “She cataloged the textures and cast-offs of the urban environment: graffiti, fire escapes, signs, garbage, shadows, abandoned newspapers, half-demolished buildings. She easily switched between registers.” [5]

We sense that an antagonism has always existed between Miss Maier’s creative self and her social mask, occasionally softened by fortunate circumstances. Finally, at some mysterious crossroads in her life, these two constructs tragically diverged. Instead of complementing and supporting each other, they grew apart. The artist gradually became a practical burden for the nanny. “When she interviewed with Zalman, a math professor at the University of Chicago, and Karen, a textbook editor, she made one thing clear: ‘I have to tell you, I come with my life, and my life is in boxes.’ No problem, they replied. They had a spacious garage. ‘We had no idea what we were in for,’ Zalman recalled. ‘She showed up with 200 boxes.’” [4]

Without the ability to bring her creative passion into the open, the “normal” nanny Maier was forced to endure. Proud and independent, she gradually retreated into a form of self-imposed exile toward the end of her life, relying on the goodwill of others. The rent for her final apartment was paid by the three brothers she once cared for, who remained deeply fond of her. Even they were unaware of her massive body of work. She rented storage lockers where she kept an enormous collection of negatives, photographic equipment, and numerous audio and video recordings. After a severe head injury from falling on ice around Christmas in 2008, she spent her last days in an emergency room. The three boys from Highland Park visited her daily. Their mother, Nenny Gensburg, noted: “She really was a unique person, but she didn’t think anything of herself.” [4]

When the rent on her storage lockers was not renewed, Miss Maier’s artistic legacy was auctioned off while she was still alive. No one in her circle knew anything about it. The secret was kept.

Why didn’t she confide in the people who embraced her? Would the world have collapsed? Yes. Her world would have. The carefully built facade would have crumbled irreversibly. She didn’t allow that, even when the remedy finally turned into poison. Her insecurity about her place in the world, perhaps rooted in her dysfunctional childhood, led to distrust and withdrawal from others. The world didn’t recognize the artist. It tolerated the well-read but eccentric persona. For the nanny, that was enough.

On the other hand, we wonder: during those fruitful decades, did the controlled “schizophrenia” between her private and public selves drive the engines of her vibrant and original creativity? Did the friction between these strange poles of existence generate the spark of creation? I believe this is beyond doubt.

The artist and the nanny courageously carried out their mission to the end. It is now up to the world to embrace and reconcile them, and finally display with pride the photographs from an unparalleled time capsule.

I'm an independent writer, and any contribution counts! If you enjoyed my work, you can buy me a coffee @ Ko-fi  →

[1] Casper, J. (2014, July). Vivian Maier: Street photographer, revelation. LensCulture. Retrieved from:

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/vivian-maier-vivian-maier-street-photographer-revelation

[2] Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. HarperCollins.

[3] Maloof Collection, Ltd (n.d.). About Vivian Maier. Vivian Maier. Retrieved from:

https://www.vivianmaier.com/about-vivian-maier/

[4] O'Donnell, N. (2010, December 14). The life and work of street photographer Vivian Maier. Chicago Magazine. Retrieved from:

https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2011/Vivian-Maier-Street-Photographer/

[5]  Lybarge, J. (2021, Dec 21). The Trouble With Writing About Vivian Maier. The New Republic. Retrieved from:

https://newrepublic.com/article/164770/vivian-maier-photographer-biography-review

[6] Reid, K. (2021, Dec 7). Writing the True Story of Vivian Maier’s Life. Chicago Magazine. Retrieved from:

https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/december-2021/writing-the-true-story-of-vivian-maiers-life/

[7] Wexler, E. (2024, July 9). Meet Vivian Maier, the reclusive nanny who secretly became one of the best street photographers of the 20th century. Smithsonian Magazine. Preuzeto sa:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meet-vivian-maier-reclusive-nanny-street-photographer-20th-century-180984665/

[*] Flâneur is a French term that refers to a person who strolls leisurely through urban spaces, observing and experiencing the surroundings without a specific destination or purpose. This concept embodies the idea of leisurely exploration, allowing the flâneur to engage with the environment in a reflective manner. Often associated with 19th-century Parisian culture, the flâneur is viewed as a detached observer of city life, embodying the spirit of modernity and the complexities of urban existence.

[sunnyardn631]

Vivian Maier's documentary

Vivian Maier’s documentary was both interesting and shocking to me. Her mysterious story and experience in life really shapes her differently from any other photographer. I found her complicated identity relatively interesting as she is often described as “eccentric���, but I actually see her as unique. I think her decision of how she wanted to live her life as a nanny rather than a photographer is interesting as she had been living as a part of the “poor” for most of her life, when she could’ve lived an entirely different life if she pursued her interest as her career. She is a non materialistic person who seeks inner fulfillments through photography. 

Although her photographic practice may not always be ethical, with her documentary approach, many of the photos captured naturally provoke the subject’s emotion at the time or their reaction to a camera in front of them. Her decisions on subjects and imagery are unique as she doesn’t aim for the norms, but rather chase after the “bizarreness of life”. This was suggested to be influenced by her early life as she was seen to have “instant alertness to human tragedy” through her reaction to men and her collection of newspapers. Her photographs were mostly captured from a low angle shot as she took them with her Rolleiflex. Due to the influence of her job, her photography is mostly taken outdoors in a natural light setting when she takes the children out, or indoors in front of a mirror where she took her self portraits. She captures the innocence and curiosity of the children and the busy and mundane life of the city from adults. She mostly places the subject around the centre of the frame and makes a strong focus on the eye to highlight the sense of emotion through their expression. Besides, the photos were taken in black and white which creates a stronger emphasis on the expression.

The idea of how her life has never been told from her own perspective to the audience remains her true identity as ambiguous. Overall, I found it shocking how this documentary was filled with bits and pieces told from the perspective of people that she encountered in life and it is summarised by John Maloof, a person that can be considered as completely unrelated.

[ardn631madiwolfgramm]

Finding Vivian Maier

The women remained a mystery.

John Maloof collaborates with producer Charlie Siskel on Finding Vivian Maier to solve this mystery. They trace VivanMaier's history through New York City, France, and Chicago, following clues. Maier was a traveller and self-taught photographer who prefered a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera and had an amazing ability to get up close and personal with people from all walks of life. Her artistic and comedic eye is similar to a lot of Berenice Abbott and Weegee. Critics and galleries have embraced Maier's work as a result of Maloof's efforts, and The New York Times named her "one of America's more insightful street photographers."

Took over 100,000 photographs that were discovered decades later in storage lockers and is now regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest photographers. Maier's strange and riveting life and art are revealed through never-before-seen photographs, films, and interviews with dozens of people who thought they knew her.

However, as John Maloof meets people who knew Vivian, new questions about her life and work arise. Families who hired her as a nanny have mixed feelings about her and hint at her dark side. Would she have wanted this kind of attention? The answer depends on how you interpret various pieces of evidence. Regardless, seeing the world through Vivan Maier's eyes is a wonder.

As bizarre as her story is, her street photography was gaining her the fame and attention she had never desired. It had an impact all over the world, and it changed the life of John Maloof, the man who championed her work and brought it to the public's attention. Never-before-seen photographs, films, and interviews with dozens of people who thought they knew her reveal a strange and riveting life and art.

[impressivepress]

Vivian Maier: Nanny With a Rolleiflex

Spread over two floors in the Fotografiska building in New York’s Flatiron District, the exhibition Vivian Maier: Unseen Work (which runs through September 29) reveals a trove of surprises. The late, great street photographer was also an evocative portraitist: Maier, a notorious loner, liked to click with people. The urban documentarian of humdrum life had a knack for humor and an eye for drama.

“The scenes she photographed are often anecdotes, coincidences, lapses of reality, the residual moments of life to which no one pays attention,” notes Anne Morin, director of DiChroma Photography in Madrid and the curator of the show. “Each of her images are situated in a place where the ordinary sheds its skin and becomes extraordinary.”

Unknown Legends

The Maier scenes range widely: from newspaper headlines peeking out from piles of debris to abstracted closeups of found objects; from candid surprised faces to random odd shots of homeless people sleeping on benches. Her Super 8 films explore waves of Chicago pedestrians, a detached swarm of humanity.

As the largest Maier retrospective yet shown in America, Unseen Work bears earmarks of completism. “Some of the newest images are quite aesthetic—but many leave you wondering the intentions,” opined the Phoblographer. “They leave me wondering why these images needed to be in a museum in the first place.”

By all indications, Maier’s photographs were not intended for museum walls. In her career as a nanny, she obsessively chronicled her life and times, but rarely shared her images with others—or even developed them into prints. Her pack-rat mentality preserved the negatives, hundreds of thousands of them stowed in boxes until the end of Maier’s life (at age 83) in 2009.

It was only afterward—when photo collectors including John Maloff and Jeff Goldstein brought her work into the art world, chronicled in Maloff’s fascinating 2013 documentary Finding Vivian Maier—that she became a photography star.

Lights Out

And Fotografiska New York is no ordinary museum. Founded in 2019 as a stateside installment in a global cadre of photography venues—in cities including Berlin, Stockholm, Tallinn, and Shanghai—the Manhattan locale has sported six floors of exhibition space and launched some 49 ambitious and far-ranging displays, from the eccentric to the mainstream. (Showing concurrently with Maier: Brooklyn street photographer Bruce Gilden and a bevy of People magazine’s iconic portraits.)

Fotografiska has been one of the few U.S. museums devoted to photography with the space and vision for shows usually found overseas in places like Madrid’s PhotoEspaña or Arles’s Les Rencontres de la Photographie. Sadly, having survived Covid, Fotografiska New York will close its doors on September 29, at the end of its exhibitions on Maier and Gilden. While tight-lipped about the future, the museum, a for-profit business, claims it will relocate somewhere in Manhattan with a broader floorspace.

“We’ve been having ongoing challenges with regard to the exhibition spaces,” executive director Sophie Wright told the New York Times about the move—which happens as the building changes owners. “The verticality of that building is not easy to manage. Our audience has been given a bumpy experience.”

Fotografiska hopes to announce a new temporary home soon. (Yet one can’t help thinking of restaurants closing “for renovation” and wondering whether they’ll ever reopen.) It’s somehow fitting that this venue’s swan song is a vast survey of a lonesome photographer who was unknown in her lifetime, rediscovered in the internet era, and somehow became emblematic of how we see one another in the world now.

The Art of the Selfie

According to the 2021 biography Vivian Maier Developed, by genealogist Ann Marks—which meticulously traces the artist’s life, with help from photo archives in the John Maloof Collection—Maier took up photography in earnest in her mid-20s after buying a top-viewing Rolleiflex camera. “It was designed to be held at the waist, facilitating inconspicuous picture taking,” Marks notes. “With its square format, there was no need to shift from horizontal to vertical positioning. … Soon she began to compose self-portraits while cradling her camera, presenting herself as a serious photographer.”

The reclusive Maier, who routinely hid her past and inner identity from people she met, had an affinity for selfies and left behind hundreds of them. “Vivian Maier is such a big phenomenon nowadays because this problem of [the] self-portrait resonates with the selfie culture we see today,” curator Morin told artsy.net. “All that crisis of identity we are viewing on social media, with tons of selfies, finds an echo in the work of Maier. Perhaps 30 years ago, she would not have been so famous or so interesting because the selfie was not so important at that time.”

Maier’s artful self-portraits, ranging from geometric mirror shots to peekaboo shadows, seem to reflect her evolving artistic personae: the confident young New Yorker who held professional photography aspirations; the adventurous, self-sufficient world traveler; the contented nanny in the Chicago suburbs who took her charges on photo trips around the city; and, later, the oft-uprooted worker who struck a lone pose against scenes of desolation and decay.

The Kids are Alright

Throughout her adult life, Maier worked as a nanny to support her creative calling as a photographer. Her stints of employment, and relationships with families who hired her, varied widely. (One gig with talk-show host Phil Donahue lasted just a few months.) By all accounts, she was most comfortable during the 11 years she spent with the Gensburg family in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois.

“She was like a real, live Mary Poppins,” Lane Gensburg later said of Maier. (However, Marks notes that Maier, a serious film buff, “wholeheartedly despised” the movie about the fictional nanny: “Her angry notes describe it as ‘outdated,’ ‘a real fiasco.’ and portraying a servant-child type of relationship.”)

In her years with the Gensburgs (1956–67), Maier bonded with the three brothers while documenting both their suburban lives and the cultural mosaic of the nearby Windy City. She left the family when the boys grew up but remained friendly. She never again found such a great fit.

Four decades later, at the end of her life, the Gensburg brothers helped Maier secure an apartment and then, after a head injury caused by a sidewalk fall, a live-in care facility. By then destitute, demented, and very delinquent on payments to a storage-locker company, Vivian Maier lost most of her possessions when the company auctioned them off.

Photo collectors John Maloof and Jeffrey Goldstein were among several bidders who claimed her photographs, negatives, and undeveloped film rolls (amid voluminous boxes of newspapers, books, broken cameras, and bric-a-brac, most of which was tossed or donated).

Maier never recovered from the fall. When she passed away in 2009, the Gensburgs held a memorial and published an obituary, which helped Maloof track down and identify the mysterious photographer whose images were, after appearing on Flickr and eBay, going viral and selling like pricey hotcakes in cyberspace.

Isolation and Empathy

Part of the paradox of Maier’s life and work is the disconnect between them. What the Gensburgs—or any of her employers—didn’t know about was her tangled family background, which she kept under wraps. She had her reasons: “She clearly concluded that no one would want to learn their nanny had an unstable, narcissistic mother; a violent, alcoholic father; and a drug-addicted, schizophrenic brother,” Marks explains. “It can safely be assumed that Vivian did not have DNA on her side.”

Long estranged from her nuclear family, Maier battled demons of her own: a severe and debilitating hoarding habit; and a condition that in Marks’ account, posthumously, experts term a “schizoid disorder.” The former wreaked plenty of havoc in Maier’s life, but also compelled her to preserve her trove of unpublished images. The latter strained her human interactions, yet may well have intensified her work.

Maier possessed a drive to document all her movements in the world, yet lacked any sense of follow-through in sharing them. She shunned close human contact (no hugs!) but found fascination in people she witnessed. She was detached enough to invade her subjects’ privacy, yet connected enough to see their lives. She expressed her inner self in outward reflections. She was of the last century, but it could’ve been ours.

Unlikely Legacy

After it was discovered by the art world, Maier’s body of work set off a feeding frenzy among collectors, curators, fellow photographers, critics, historians, photo aficionados … and capitalist venturers. With no direct heirs, the contents of her estate sparked disputes, lawsuits, and deal-making, with John Maloof emerging as the owner of the lion’s share of the archive and New York’s Howard Greenberg Gallery as its U.S. rep. The work found its way to walls in dozens of museums around the world before landing at Fotografiska.

Who knows what Maier would say about all this? “Nothing is meant to last forever,” she once told an employer. “You have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel. You get on, you have to go to the end, and then someone else has the same opportunity.”

Through September 29, this body of work sits in a grand photo-exhibition venue that will soon be shuttered. Through the magic of the camera, reflections from the eyes of Vivian Maier have attained a sort of permanence.

~ Jack Crage · Jul 31, 2024.

[lucysautblog]

Vivian Maier, 1926 - 2009.

Maier was a street photographer now well known for the 'mirror selfie' along with portraits of her family and strangers in particular the poor and elderly. The mirror selfie is presently dominating social media so seeing these photos of Maier taking a mirror selfie in the 1900s with a big older camera rather than the current iPhone is quite ahead of her time. Photos of hers I have selected above are all in black and white which creates an eerie mood, exaggerating shadows and bright light.

I think her photos execute her time well, showing what she was wearing, her haircut and her surroundings reflected being a woman in the 60s. Her expression in her self-portraits is mostly quite serious almost too drained from any energy to show emotion, I think this also adds to the monotone as it reflects the mood portrayed.

VIvian's work surprisingly only became known after she died in 2009. It is estimated she had over 100,000 negatives. Her work was auctioned off due to a nonpayment of rent in 2007, John Maloof was one of the men who discovered her work. "Now, with roughly 90% of her archive reconstructed, Vivian’s work is part of a renaissance in interest in the art of Street Photography." ( 2024, Maloof Collection Ltd.)

I think it's incredible that her work is so highly thought of and appreciated in the photography community yet in the duration of her life she did not show the public nor consider photography to be more than a hobby.

[interpretedimagejessicarayment]

Finding Vivian Maier - Documentary

John Maloof was a young flea market expert. He attended an auction where is was the lucky winner of a box of films (negatives). He didn't use them straight away as it wasn't what he was looking for at the time. As time passed he started to look through the box and found Vivian Maier's collection of film negatives. She was known to have many boxes filled with stuff in her room, so much so that you had very little space to walk. She had travelled to many places capturing different people around the world. Many families she worked with, knew her as a tall lady who would wear men's shirts and army-like boots. Vivian Maier was born in New York but grew up in France before coming back to New York where she was, a nanny, housekeeper, and caretaker.

www.vivianmaier.com

Many of her photos of self-portraits or street photography and portraits of others. Her work was known as "playful, authentic New York, quality and hopefully, it had a human understanding" - Joey Meyerowitz. Mary Ellen Clark said she has a "sense of humour but also a sense of tragedy". I found her work to be very detailed in such a way that it looked almost taken off guard. She took photos of everything which has made her work so vast and captivating. I love how she took photos of everything no matter how the emotion behind the photo felt. She would send her rolls of film to a small photo lab in France to get her films developed then sent back to her in America. I found this interesting as to why didn't she get her photos developed in America was the semi-gloss finish so important that she only trusted Simon. I think that her photos brought a new sense of belonging to people as she captured everyone. So she never really had an exact style of specific practice. One thing I noticed in her self-portraits is that she never smiled, she always had a straight face. I think she kept her work to herself as she was a private person and didn't like people going through her stuff, this reminds me of how she wouldn't let the families she worked for into her bedroom.