Vivian Maier and her photography

[Alex Benjamin]

I have said it before, so FWIW................ i think she is one of THE Finest photographers that ever walked the Earth.

I will copy and paste that color photo from just a few posts above as an example. Keeping in mind, "Street Photography" is often VERY Fleeting and Unique.

This is an extraordinary photograph. It's so interesting how photographers - Robert Franck and Gordon Parks being the two most famous examples - include the American flag as trope in order to make the photo both metaphorical but also clearly about America.

I would have love to see the complete roll of this one. It's more than plausible that the two women were looking in front of the them, waiting to cross the street, and I'm wondering if Mayer - feeling it would make a stronger picture - didn't say something, or at least purposefully moved uncomfortably close, in order to have both of them turn towards her.

I agree with you that street photography is fleeting and unique, but I also think that good street photographers also have a bit of the stage director in them.

 

[MattKing]

None of it is reliable. All of it is tainted by the knowledge "oh, now she's famous and wasn't she talented". Practically nothing documentary regarding her photography exists, except the word of people who were per-adolescent at the time the photos were shot.

It's fodder for gawkers.

I think the Amazon blurb about Professor Bannos' book is a reasonable response to this:
https://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Maier...5c34a&pd_rd_wg=jI4vU&pd_rd_i=022659923X&psc=1

 

[markbau]

Just came across this thread. I had never heard of her until I was walking around Catania in Eastern Sicily a few years ago. They had an exhibition of her and I went in. As to the technical aspects, she seemed to have a knack to get her exposure spot on, the prints were printed beautifully. I'm assuming she used old thicker emulsions and when printed on modern papers the results were sublime. There is no doubt she had a great eye. But, and this in not her fault, the genre has been done to death.
I don't know who printed her negs for the exhibit I saw but they deserve a lot of credit.

 

[Don_ih]

I think the Amazon blurb about Professor Bannos' book is a reasonable response to this:
https://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Maier...5c34a&pd_rd_wg=jI4vU&pd_rd_i=022659923X&psc=1

And is there anything greater than what actually fills that blurb? "She explains Maier’s careful adjustments of photographic technique" - isn't that just instructions for developing film? That "Maier was extremely conscientious about how her work was developed, printed, and cropped" is actually normal for anyone who likes taking photos at any level. These are things that are only significant because she has been determined to be someone worthy of scrutiny. "Maier was not a nanny who moonlighted as a photographer; she was a photographer who supported herself as a nanny" is a statement that implies value, that suggests one is more worthwhile than the other, that she could have just as well been working at Taco Bell heating the plastic bags of slop (and even that might be something someone loves doing, you know). Why could she not be "just" a nanny? Is that not worthwhile? Maybe she felt that was her calling - something that gave her a real connection to children. Perhaps that was something she wanted just as much as she wanted to take photos. But all of this and practically everything else is speculative and based on a significance she did not have when alive.

I'm not saying that biography doesn't address the interest of people. But her known life story is a couple of paragraphs long. The rest of it is reading tea leaves. And all of it diminishes the thought and care that went into her photography because it invariably explains it in some most likely irrelevant way and distracts from the photos themselves.

Read Richard Miller's Portrait of a Friendship for a genuine biographical story. It's his experience of his relationship with Brett Weston (this has been mentioned in the Ask a Weston thread, but I read it quite a while ago). It's what some might call "anecdotal" and has no trace of professorly research (except the mining of memory). It's a genuinely human little tale, though, and it is easily as much about Miller as it is about Weston (moreso, I'd say). And it does something probably no biography of Maier can do: it's personal and non-interpretive, it demonstrates nothing yet is insightful.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I think the Amazon blurb about Professor Bannos' book is a reasonable response to this:
https://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Maier...5c34a&pd_rd_wg=jI4vU&pd_rd_i=022659923X&psc=1

I agree that is a good description of Vivian Maier and puts her work nicely into context.

 

[Ste_S]

I think she's great. Incredible eye for composition and colour, and able to use multiple styles of photography to capture the flavour of the street- candid, portrait, self-portrait, abstract, landscape etc

I do like trying to work out how she did some of her shots. The over the shoulder look is one of her signatures- are they posed, candid or did Vivian attract their attention for the shot? Take the below for example- great subject with red coat and hat, face perfectly lit and framed by the two yellow lines.

In the end, however, it doesn't really matter as the shots are great.

 

[jtk]

I think she's great. Incredible eye for composition and colour, and able to use multiple styles of photography to capture the flavour of the street- candid, portrait, self-portrait, abstract, landscape etc

I do like trying to work out how she did some of her shots. The over the shoulder look is one of her signatures- are they posed, candid or did Vivian attract their attention for the shot? Take the below for example- great subject with red coat and hat, face perfectly lit and framed by the two yellow lines.

In the end, however, it doesn't really matter as the shots are great.

Fine observations.

 

[Certain Exposures]

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread. However, I just want to talk about her work because I am reading the Ann Marks biography.

I have said it before, so FWIW................ i think she is one of THE Finest photographers that ever walked the Earth.

I hope we see more of her negs brought to life.
As a percentage, i think i like more of her photos that any other photographer i know of.
Turning the pages of the few of her books i have seen or looking at her pictures on line..................it has been one great photo after another.

IMHO she was a Singular and Unique talent.

Just from the perspective of her abilities as a photographer; people like Vivian are not common.
They come along (very) infrequently..

Yes, I agree.

Still, it makes me wonder how many women were just as good yet never had their work published.

I do wonder if Vivian ever experienced a threat of violence on the street, despite sometimes having children with her. That is the number one thing my female photography acquaintances worry about. Back then, she might not have had justice if it had happened.

There have been several times I have been out minding my business with a lens cap on my camera, yet someone (usually a vagrant) has approached me to let me know they'd take my life if I took their photograph. So, I can only imagine traveling solo as a woman in the 50's.

I think she's great. Incredible eye for composition and colour, and able to use multiple styles of photography to capture the flavour of the street- candid, portrait, self-portrait, abstract, landscape etc

I do like trying to work out how she did some of her shots. The over the shoulder look is one of her signatures- are they posed, candid or did Vivian attract their attention for the shot? Take the below for example- great subject with red coat and hat, face perfectly lit and framed by the two yellow lines.

In the end, however, it doesn't really matter as the shots are great.

I think it does matter because it influences my appreciation for the difficulty of capturing any given frame based on my own experience on the street. However, it does not at all 'detract' from the posed work.

One of my favorite images of hers is one where the subject (a beautiful woman in formal attire) looks like she is a split second from giving Vivian explicit instructions about where to shove her camera. Her expression is frozen, and the juxtaposition of the soft light, her gorgeous face, and the twisted expression is sublime. I see it as evidence of how fearless Vivian was on the street.

 

[Pieter12]

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread. However, I just want to talk about her work because I am reading the Ann Marks biography.



Yes, I agree.

Still, it makes me wonder how many women were just as good yet never had their work published.

I do wonder if Vivian ever experienced a threat of violence on the street, despite sometimes having children with her. That is the number one thing my female photography acquaintances worry about. Back then, she might not have had justice if it had happened.

There have been several times I have been out minding my business with a lens cap on my camera, yet someone (usually a vagrant) has approached me to let me know they'd take my life if I took their photograph. So, I can only imagine traveling solo as a woman in the 50's.

One of my favorite images of hers is one where the subject (a beautiful woman in formal attire) looks like she is a split second from giving Vivian explicit instructions about where to shove her camera. Her expression is frozen, and the juxtaposition of the soft light, her gorgeous face, and the twisted expression is sublime.

Pure conjecture on my part: Ms Maier shot mostly with a Rollei TLR, so subjects might not have been as aware of her attention as the camera was not up to her eye and is pretty silent. And she was usually accompanied by her charges, maybe drawing less suspicion to the fact that she was taking photos (could have been of the kids). And maybe people are, or were, less wary of a woman with a camera.

 

[Certain Exposures]

Note to future readers - I updated my comment a split second after @Pieter12 quoted it.

 

[xkaes]

I got a copy from the library, and I'm glad I took the time. She certainly has a excellent appreciation for composition, and the "decisive moment". She obviously took her time for each shot -- and must have taken lots of shots of the same subject.

Many of these shots could only have been taken by a woman. Any man taking some of these shots would have ended up in the gutter -- or in jail.

Like a submini camera used with a 90° SPY-FINDER, a TLR can easily be used in such a way that the subject doesn't even know that their picture is being taken. For 35mm, there are also 90° lens attachments that work on longer lenses from Spiratone.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

Recently checked the movie "Finding Vivian Maier" out from the library. Always enjoyed her work but the film dug a little deeper into who she was. Interesting is an apt description.

 

[George Mann]

From Anne Marks biography of Vivian. it seems that her mental problems did not keep her from photographing. It may have, however, kept her from exhibiting.

You and others assume that she had mental issues. But I will counter that by stating that she was most likely just eccentric.