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The Russian Vivian Maier

Mainecoonmaniac

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You create a legend around a dead person who took a lot of pictures, if you take enough there's bond to be a few good ones........then you profit.
Interesting piece of marketing.
 
Agreed. Just looking around flickr there are a lot of highly talented artists especially analog, that we have never and will never hear of. Many that I enjoy on the level of greats like Ansel Adams, but you will likely never hear their name. They don't care for fame and see photography as an end in itself. I think that's what people respect about Vivian Maeir, like her or not.

I do think highly of many Russian and ex Soviet photographers however, for the hardships they lived through and their limited means of creating something beautiful. Those two lead to great photography.
 
awty said:
You create a legend around a dead person who took a lot of pictures, if you take enough there's bond to be a few good ones........then you profit.
Interesting piece of marketing.
Click to expand...

The difference to Vivian Maier is from my oponium that Vivian's "succsess rate" was great.
Every 100. shot was real good and she took some dozent shots of great reputation.
(with a little luck - there have been no way - it was much more that luck)
So her photographs caterpulted Vivian Mayer to the league of top 100 photographers of the century.
Not as here .....but the russian photographs are not bad - I don't wanted to state that.
(.....my grandpa shot some better photographs in the early 20th...)
with regards
 

It's difficult to tell. We're looking at Vivian Maier's work through the eyes of John Maloof, likewise Masha Ivashintsova through the eyes of her daughter.

From what I've seen there's a few nice photos from Ivashintsova, but nothing that blows me away in the way that Maier's work does.
Is that because Maier was a better photographer, or because John Maloof is a better editor than Ivashintsova's daughter or a bit of both ? I guess we won't know.
 
It is definitivly caused from our own socialization in a different world compared to the sovjet union.
Therefore we may have an other look on such things.
And it is behind different historic experience. We may have different aestetics. If you look at the magic shot from the elephant in the streets of harlem - you may associate this with feelings from the time you grow up.
(I will not say you grew up in harlem).
And to people from the eastern system they possible feel that shot as insignificant.......? Same is possible caused in opposite direction.
It is just a different world !
with regards
 
I have seen and worked on Vivian Maier negatives, I can tell you each frame I saw was a considered composition, with her camera.
 
A nice historical record, with one or two very good shots, but definitely not even close to Maier from what I've seen.
 
I loved the third photograph of the two dogs in the snow. The one standing up is telling the one sitting to always stand up in snow to prevent the kind of pain that causes howling

pentaxuser
 
I love vintage photography, I can look at old photos all day regardless of who took them.
Street photography is a very tough medium, most people arent very good at, Im terrible at it. I specially admire anyone that is good at it, Vivian was good at it, she captured a time and place very well. The photos Ive seen are well composed and edited.
What I dont like is the way someone invents a legend to profit on someone else's work.
I havent seen any of Vivian photos that are exceptional, maybe thats just my lack of understanding. Her pictures to me seem naive a simplistic, which is nice, but there are far more creative photographers back then and certainly now.
As for Masha, having looked at more of her photos, there are quite a few that shows someone who knows how to compose a picture well. Different photography to Vivians.
But who am I to judge.
 
Bob Carnie said:
I have seen and worked on Vivian Maier negatives, I can tell you each frame I saw was a considered composition, with her camera.
Click to expand...
I saw prints made from her negatives at the Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco and they're fantastic. All square and I think they're printed full frame. Did you print them?
 
If these people shot digital, they would have been time travellers.
 
Mainecoonmaniac said:
I saw prints made from her negatives at the Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco and they're fantastic. All square and I think they're printed full frame. Did you print them?
Click to expand...

I specifically went to Toronto in 2016 to see the Vivian Maier prints that Bob Carnie made at the Stephen Bulger gallery. I wasn't disappointed, Bob did an excellent job.
 
Do we judge the photos in isolation or in the context of the photographer's world? To have produced these during those tragic and desperate times is amazing and a testament to her.

We sometimes take our good fortune for granted
 
Put me in the meh category with Maier. Lots of hype, but what I have seen just makes me think she was a good photographer who tried to make pictures like she saw in the magazines of the time. People confuse nostalgia and a good story with incredible images. The myth of Maier is far more interesting than the images.

The nice thing about this story is the family will benefit, not some opportunistic bozo who found some batty old woman's images and thought he could make some money.
 
I have seen Vivian Maier prints by Bob in Toronto. Nice! Don't know why they feel to me little bit on RC side.
I have seen great street and indoors USSR photographers on Flickr and else.
HCB hit it twice and told it all about USSR as I knew and feel about.
What else....
Oh, this re-discovered photographer, it is good as documentary. Any way...
As about digital, only time will tell, but I have seen enough great photographers with digital cameras already. Perhaps, I'm just not biased one... Bruce Gilden is already one of them.
 
Dahod said:
Do we judge the photos in isolation or in the context of the photographer's world? To have produced these during those tragic and desperate times is amazing and a testament to her.

We sometimes take our good fortune for granted
Click to expand...

Khm... Most of the pictures I have seen from her so far are from the Zastoy time. It means time then nothing happened. Also known as Brezhnev time.
She was born in well established Soviet family (well above average) and was not in danger before Stalin crapped out. After it, it was hard times and tragedies happened from time to time, but seeing and reading her bio, she was not into it until she took dissidents side. And it was something very uncommon among Russians... Most of us never did and didn't even knew about dissidents. We were millions, not in danger and even happy often.
 
I had a look at them too (thanks for showing us, by the way) and my first impression was also that these rather looked like typical photos you take of your family and friends. I´ve been to a Vivian Maier exhibition as well and her photos usually exhibit a certain style of composition (may I even say formalism) that is different from the pictures Masha took. However, they are very interesting photographs as well, very worth seeing and I appreciate it that her daughter took the effort to put them on the web. I hope there are more to come, and only then are we able to make a definite judgment. So great pictures they are, but I would not say they resemble the style of Vivian Maier. Anyway, I do not see that this is claimed anywhere on the website, though there are some similarities between Vivian and Masha of course.
 
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Bob Carnie said:
I have seen and worked on Vivian Maier negatives, I can tell you each frame I saw was a considered composition, with her camera.
Click to expand...

When you see an entire roll of Vivian's negatives: Every frame a different subject. Every one a keeper, and 95% of them photos most of us would be happy if we shot once in a lifetime. She had an incredible eye and skill level.
 
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