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Vivian Maier

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Started 2 years ago by NikoDoby
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1. Discovery of Vivian Maier - street photographer

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NikoDoby

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Vivian Maier spent a majority of her life taking pictures of her surroundings. A few years ago John Maloff purchased thousands of her neglected film and photos at an auction. He was amazed by her work and began a search for her. It's really a sad, sad story because she never got the recognition she deserved.

blog with her photos
http://www.vivianmaier.blogspot.com/

News video about the story
http://www.wttw.com/chicagotonight/video/A1hO97qcWo7ViDL_rWniVH2LakYxNa7J

I first ran across the blog over a year ago. It really got me thinking about all of my photos and what would happen to them when I kick the bucket. Twenty or thirty years from now how many of your hard drives will survive with all of those ones and zeros that make up your images? If your hard drives are sold off at auction do you think the buyer will save your images or just reformat the drive and use it for porn? Just think of how many digital photos will disappear because of "neglect", never to be seen again.

*Niko pulls an old shoebox full of negatives from under his bed. He holds a few frames up to the light, sighs and wipes a tear away*

Posted 2 years ago #
Funduro

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Looks like she was a great photographer. Some images have great contrast impact and play of light. Good find.

Posted 2 years ago #
poster

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Some great phots there. Reminds me of winograd a little bit.

I have noticed that my family rarely if ever looks at our photos. Back in the day we had albums of photographs, and we would look at them periodically. Now all of the photosare on a hard drive never looked upon. Kind of sad really. That is why i wanted to get a film slr and start taking famly pics with that.

Posted 2 years ago #
Michael DeRose

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hmm you make a good point. I too, wonder what will happen to all my stuff when im dead. I do think it would be cool for my grandchildren to read about random musings i had when i was 24.

Her stuff is great. I think she captures a lot of emotion.

Posted 2 years ago #
jcvert1

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I am gonna check this out
- Vivian's first solo exhibition will be at the Chicago Cultural Center. Around 80 posthumous prints will be on display including a sample of her color work. It runs from January 8th to April 3rd 2011. If you're in Chicago, stop into the Cultural Center on 78 E. Washington.

Posted 2 years ago #
Mike Gunter

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Hi,

Terrific and thanks for sharing.

Hopefully they will put the exhibit on line.

My best,

Mike

Posted 2 years ago #
NSXType-R

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This is really cool, it reminds me of another photographer I had heard about. Should I start a new thread for that photographer or should I post it here too?

It's really sad that she didn't even get recognition for her work. Heck, I'm sure most of us shoot for ourselves and make wonderful shots, it's not like we'd get recognition either.

I have mixed feelings about Maloof benefiting from her photography. Yes, now that he bought her stuff he has the right to distribute her work, but that's sort of like getting paid for nothing. He didn't work for any of it. But yes, for him to discover her work was great.

I love photos from another time.

Posted 2 years ago #
warprints

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slightly off topic ....

My grandfather was a recon photographer (in balloons) for the german army during WWI. If he had taken photos that were saved in some obscure format (think 10" floppy or punch cards from 30 years ago), there would be no way for me to enjoy his photos now.

My suggestion is to do contact sheets of your better photos with fairly large images, so at least there is some documentation of your photos that does not require any "processing". Many ink/paper combinations now last 200+ years in dark storage before significant degradation takes place. Hopefully, in the next 200 years, someone will come up with an even more archival way to scan and print the images.

Posted 2 years ago #
bernard

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I wish I could portrait people like that !… What an artist she was !!!

Posted 2 years ago #
Mike Gunter

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Hi,

@warprints

Your grandfather's prints are preserved from WWI at the Air University Library at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, AL. Permission to see them will require some doing, unfortunately. They are restricted to reasonable needs basis for academics, as far as I know, and and they are preserved in a clean room.

There is no photographer's name assigned to the shooter, but you might get lucky enough to know which unit your grandfather was in to get into the collection of photographs he might have taken, and there might be some notation that suggests or even asserts or attributes authorship.

The Library isn't terrifically staffed, and I don't know if you can write them for any help, but I thought you'd like to know that his work is published and is available to see.

My best,

Mike

Posted 2 years ago #
warprints

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Thanks Mike. I may try to determine what they have. My contacts with the powers that be are getting very tenous with age, but I may still be able to pull some strings to get access/info.

Posted 2 years ago #
studio460

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An amazing story. Vivian was quite an artist. Yes, it's very sad that all of her well-deserved accolades will come only post-humously.

Posted 2 years ago #
NSXType-R

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warprints said:
Thanks Mike. I may try to determine what they have. My contacts with the powers that be are getting very tenous with age, but I may still be able to pull some strings to get access/info.

You sound oddly powerful from that statement you made just there. :D

Posted 2 years ago #
warprints

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NSXType-R said:
You sound oddly powerful from that statement you made just there. :D

LOL. No power. Used to have some good connections, that's all.

Posted 2 years ago #
vidrazor

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>>I have mixed feelings about Maloof benefiting from her photography. Yes, now that he bought her stuff he has the right to distribute her work, but that's sort of like getting paid for nothing. He didn't work for any of it.<<

That's not really true. If you watch the video on that page you realize how much of himself and his own money he's devoted to all of her work. Of course he stands to benefit from it but it's obvious that's not the only reason he's doing this. Frankly I think he should benefit from it, if it weren't for him, no one would have ever seen her absolutely gorgeous work. It's a bittersweet story about her, but I guess she chose to be alone and keep all this stuff to herself. It's too bad he never got to meet her.

Posted 2 years ago #
NSXType-R

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vidrazor said:
>>I have mixed feelings about Maloof benefiting from her photography. Yes, now that he bought her stuff he has the right to distribute her work, but that's sort of like getting paid for nothing. He didn't work for any of it.<<

That's not really true. If you watch the video on that page you realize how much of himself and his own money he's devoted to all of her work. Of course he stands to benefit from it but it's obvious that's not the only reason he's doing this. Frankly I think he should benefit from it, if it weren't for him, no one would have ever seen her absolutely gorgeous work. It's a bittersweet story about her, but I guess she chose to be alone and keep all this stuff to herself. It's too bad he never got to meet her.

True, those are valid points. I did watch the video, he seems to be a nice guy, it's just that he did none of the actual photography.

But you're right, he did put a lot of money and his own time into it.

Posted 2 years ago #
bmxdad

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The odd thing about her is that she most have liked the trill off taking the pictures, she did not care much about sharing her work or even looking at her own work, matter of fact 30% of her work was newer developed.

Pete

Posted 2 years ago #
Bram

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Just saw this and I'm still totally amazed. Her captures had such an incredibly pure feel to them. So tragic as well that only 2 years or so after her death her work gets recognized. It's great though that this guy is investing so much of his time into this. Makes you think how many boxes full of photographic gold are still out there in some attics, not having been passed on to the right hands yet...

Posted 2 years ago #
Super Shooter

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I'm not really a fan of street photography. That's because I imagine Bruce Gilden jumping into people's faces with a camera and flash. But Vivian's photography is more than just portraits of random people on the street. Her photos put me into a serene scene amongst the chaos of a busy city street. Very different then the force fed pictures of other so-called street photographers.

bmxdad said:
she did not care much about sharing her work or even looking at her own work, matter of fact 30% of her work was newer developed.

I totally disagree with you. Not every photographer needs or wants to post on Facebook, Flickr, or the Photo-A-Day thread to seek reassurances that they are a good photographer. The fact that see didn't develop every single roll immediately after finishing them doesn't mean she didn't care about her work. Shooting film is a longer process, obviously. I still have several rolls of film that for one reason or another I have yet to develop. She was a nanny so she probably didn't always have the time to get her film processed. Several years worth of shooting and those undeveloped rolls start to add up.

Posted 2 years ago #
NSXType-R

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Super Shooter said:
I'm not really a fan of street photography. That's because I imagine Bruce Gilden jumping into people's faces with a camera and flash. But Vivian's photography is more than just portraits of random people on the street. Her photos put me into a serene scene amongst the chaos of a busy city street. Very different then the force fed pictures of other so-called street photographers.

I totally disagree with you. Not every photographer needs or wants to post on Facebook, Flickr, or the Photo-A-Day thread to seek reassurances that they are a good photographer. The fact that see didn't develop every single roll immediately after finishing them doesn't mean she didn't care about her work. Shooting film is a longer process, obviously. I still have several rolls of film that for one reason or another I have yet to develop. She was a nanny so she probably didn't always have the time to get her film processed. Several years worth of shooting and those undeveloped rolls start to add up.

I love street photography. I enjoy looking at older examples of photography on streets I used to walk on and spotting differences. Most of the time if you look at photos from even 50 years ago it's completely unrecognizable.

I don't enjoy Bruce Gilden's photos either- he's the one with the Leica, right? That's too in your face and annoying. Not to mention stuff like that would get you arrested by all the super mommys. There's street photography and then there's street photography like Vivian Maier, I agree to that too.

Posted 2 years ago #
Bram

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I think we should make the distinction between two different kinds of street photography. The thing Bruce does conflicts with what I think is the entire point with photographing on the street: you go out into the world you can't change to see what it's like, catch scenes on the street. Bruce just comes into peoples faces and captures their reaction to him. He totally interferes with the scene and in a way controls it, no different from what a studio photographer could do to his model.
The 'real' street photography for me is the kind where you try to minimize your interaction with the people and the scene. Naturally some portraits by Maier would have required her to ask the person to pose, but she must've asked them in a friendly manner, not by sticking a frigging camera in their face first.

Posted 2 years ago #
NikoDoby

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Here is a video of Bruce Gilden for those who have no idea who he is:

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He's a big A-hole if you ask me. He personifies the stereotype of creepy old man with a camera.

Posted 2 years ago #
Michael DeRose

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ohhh the earlier comments make sense now.

Posted 2 years ago #
poster

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I used to look down on Bruce Gilden for his style. But the more i look at his photography the more i like it. It's my guilty pleasure. Say what you will but it's not like he walks around with a huge telephoto lens shooting pictures of pretty girls walking around in skimpy clothes. He shoots "characters"as he would put it and i like it. He shoots with a wide lens to be inthe middle of the action. Can't be in the middle of the action without being in people's faces.

Posted 2 years ago #
Mike Gunter

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Hi,

I'm kind of with Niko. He seems more of an a hole, intrusive. He's doing this for _his benefit_. He's making his _art_ at _every one else's expense_. That, at the least, is rude.

I'm not even sure I like what he does - that's anyone's prerogative. What little I've seen, seems derisive and contemptuous.

My best,

Mike

Posted 2 years ago #