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Vivian Maier

cliveh

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These images by Vivian Maier are brilliant:- Have you ever seen a collection of images better than this?

 
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One of THE Most brilliant photographers that ever walked the face of the Earth.
I cannot get enough of her.
 
Probably because she was European, they tend to be more honest with less bravado, also being a socialist she had more empathy to the less well off.
Pity she didn't get to dictate the way her pictures are presented.
 
Brilliant marketing will do it to almost anything.

I've always been perplexed by how some respond to VM's photographs vs. lots of others, including what's available on Flickr at large. There are many good or maybe even some great photographs, but ... and the is a big BUT ... where does she stands so high exactly where others do not? Just to compare the known greats? And I am not talking about HCB.

Some weeks back I read a comment from a member about how Saul Leiter is being "shoved down our throats", of course undeservedly so. Talk about pushing it with Vivian Maier. As with a lot of things, it would help, including Maier's legacy, to slow down a bit and take it with some salt.
 
Hassasin said:
Brilliant marketing will do it to almost anything.
Click to expand...

In this instance, there was something to market. Her photos are good. Her widespread popularity is due mostly to people finding her story compelling - that appeals to non-photographers. The staid "greats" are mostly of interest to photographers.
 
Don_ih said:
In this instance, there was something to market. Her photos are good. Her widespread popularity is due mostly to people finding her story compelling - that appeals to non-photographers. The staid "greats" are mostly of interest to photographers.
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People see what they see. I was merely referring to the loud awe her photographs suddenly bring on. Sometimes it seems like poele are so ecstatic about Maier's photographs, they are almost scared how that was even possible. And yet, there are some great ones, many just as good as any, and the rest get credit for no merit.

As for her life story, surely some of it is correct, is everything? I seriously doubt it, it mostly reads like a novel written to sell, not to tell how it was. Marketing is written all over it.
 
Hassasin said:
As for her life story, surely some of it is correct, is everything?
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A "life story" is almost necessarily a fabrication. It will emphasis some parts and ignore others. But it doesn't matter that much, really. She is a found artist - which almost means "invented". Her photos are of quite high quality and depict a different time (a period people feel particularly romantic about, actually).

There's no reason to compare her to anyone else. It's not a competition. That people like her photos and her story is enough. She's also probably done more to spur interest in other photographers than anyone else ever has.
 
I have had the pleasure of printing a Vivian Maier show from the Goldstein collection, 46 images in total. They were very well processed and exposed and not a lot of bracketing and no cropping. There has been a lot written about her , most second hand information but I would have liked to have known her, she reminds me of many clients I have worked with over the years that are obsessed with creating a story with the camera.
 

Art fashion is irrational. It's often driven by those with an economic interest in that food chain.

But that does not vitiate the brilliance of Maier's work. I saw her show at the Chicago Public Library when it first opened (I happened to be in town that week) and the photography was just breathtakingly good. The printing? Not so much. Someone decided that the best way to show her work was to scan and reproduce at least some of it by digital/inkjet means. It was good, but it wasn't remotely a silver print.
 
Her pictures aren't "just" photographs: they're stories. You can stare at one and suddenly a narrative pops into your head. They invite you to engage in the world.

Sure, other photos can do that, too. But she does it consistently. She's a storyteller as much as a photographer. She lived a modest life with a subterranean world of imagination sparked by travel and heritage. She presented to the world in a subdued way and used the camera to identify and spin stories that are probably as much about her as her subjects.

Cezanne wasn't nearly as good a technical artist as Picasso. But Cezanne had an incredible vision. Picasso largely took his own vision from others and made them into technical masterpieces. Maier is like Cezanne.
 
I love her work. But also I keep thinking how easy it is to get in trouble by photographing this way in 2024: kids, homeless, cripples, etc. None of that is acceptable anymore.
 
Don_ih said:
In this instance, there was something to market. Her photos are good. Her widespread popularity is due mostly to people finding her story compelling - that appeals to non-photographers. The staid "greats" are mostly of interest to photographers.
Click to expand...

Reminds me that a great insult was "selling out," when the real trick was having something to sell.
 
I think part of her great success was that she found her perfect instrument. Strolling unobtrusively with children, looking down into the Rolleiflex with contemplation was perfect for her.
 

THAT, is an excellent observation and further motivates me to move away from my usual rocks, trees, and detritus subjects and more toward narrative photography.
 
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It is currently impossible to separate the photographs from the story.
For a whole bunch of reasons extraneous to her realities, she probably would not have as much appreciation now if her photographs had been made public when she was taking them.
Something like the Disfarmer story.
I appreciate/like/am impressed by the photography from Vivian Maier that I've seen.
 

You're likely correct. Her photographs were less remarkable in her time - everyone was living in that narrative. Though, I'd argue that she was stellar even within her time. I suppose we venerate her in some degree because she takes us back in the time machine to understand a world we never lived in.

Thanks for the Disfarmer reference. This was new to me.
 

The other major factor relates to her gender - how many female street photographers from her era can you think of?
That and her relative isolation from artistic communities.
 
MattKing said:
The other major factor relates to her gender - how many female street photographers from her era can you think of?
That and her relative isolation from artistic communities.
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I dunno about street photographers, but there were certainly many female artists - both photographic and other - in that era.

I would say that there are not generally that many street photographers in total that have gained any real recognition over the history of the discipline. Off the top of my head I can think of a few - HCB, Brassai, Atget, Winogrand ... I'm sure there are some that I'm missing, but it's not hundreds...
 
awty said:
Probably because she was European, they tend to be more honest with less bravado, also being a socialist she had more empathy to the less well off.
Pity she didn't get to dictate the way her pictures are presented.
Click to expand...

She was born in the US, and grew up both in the US and France, but lived her adult life and died in the US. I'm not so sure it's fair to ascribe anything about her work to being "European", any more than it would to her being "American".
 

There are many more - Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Joel Meyerowitz, Helen Levitt (since the subject is about women), Bruce Gilden, Alex Webb, Leon Levinstein, Louis Faurer, Saul Leiter, Tony Ray-Jones. I could go on for a while
 
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In this neighborhood we had Dorothea Lange, who has been famous for a long time. Both women show a lot of empathy with their subjects in their pictures, even though Dorothea could be quite selfish with respect to her personal life. I tend to admire these kinds of photographs simply because I do not and cannot work in that style myself. Frankly, I can't get in anyone's face with a camera, or intrude on their privacy, unless they deliberately ask or pay me to do it; and that nearly always lends a bit of stiffness rather than spontaneity to the image.

Some well-known "street photographers" were stone cold pursuers of human content, far more cynical than sympathetic.
They shouldn't all be lumped together.
 
It can be weird at first, but "you" do get used to it.
I have shot all kinds of people, of all ages and economies.

You have to use your head.
People eating at a sidewalk cafe...... i do not stand at 90 degrees and 3 feet from a couple.
If you need that you can always go across the street and strap on a 105.
I am more at 10 degrees shooting down the length of the table line.

Never had a problem shooting kids in a public place like a park or street festival.
If you present a smiling, "decent person" vibe, most people are cool with it.
I usually hang out a few minutes and let myself bee seen first.

Yeah, i have had a few people bitch.
One lady was VERY Concerned what i was going to do with the pics of her 2 kids.
It was only 3 or 4 frames. She lived rather close to me. I gave her my phone number, met her when the Negs were developed and gave the negs to her.
I was happy to do it. She was happy and thankful i accommodated her concerns.

In You Face Bruce Gilden archetypes are fair game for a broken nose. IMHO
Can you.? Yes.
Should you.? ......... to each their own
 

The greater question, though, is are we allowed to use/publish/profit from said images without a model release?
 
Years ago when I lived in a city I did street photography with a TLR. Nobody knew what it was, where I was pointing it, or when I was operating the shutter.

A few months ago I went out again with a TLR. I had two women point at the camera and exclaim "Look. That's one of those cameras that woman in the movie used. The one who left all those pictures after she died."

So much for stealth.
 
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