Hello, art lover!
Stephanie here...
First, I’d like to say that I am passionate about urban photography and its thousands of possibilities. When you go shooting in the street, everything is uncertain, and that's why I am so enchanted by this branch of photography. For the week post, I chose Vivian Maier because she synthesizes everything I admire most in a photographer: sensitivity, curiosity, and a taste for the banal. The obsession with keeping memories is a feature she carried with her, and the most interesting thing about it is the fact that apparently Vivian never shared her images with anyone. I like to look at a photograph and imagine what had happened before, during and some time after. Where are those people? What story do they keep?
Vivian Maier was a bounced between Europe and the United States before coming back to New York City in 1951. In her spare time, she would shoot photos that she zealously hid from the eyes of others. Taking snapshots into the late 1990s, Maier would leave behind a body of work comprising over 100,000 negatives. Additionally, Vivian’s passion for documenting extended to a series of homemade documentary films and audio recordings. She really was a file hoarder!
Vivian became poor and was ultimately saved by three of the children she had nannied earlier in her life. Fondly remembering Maier as a second mother, they pooled together to pay for an apartment and took the best of care for her. Unbeknownst to them, one of Vivian’s storage lockers was auctioned off due to delinquent payments. In those storage lockers lay the massive hoard of negatives Maier secretly stashed throughout her lifetime.
Her enormous and magnificent work was discovered when in 2007 her work was discovered at an auction house on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Since then, it would eventually impact the world over and change the life of John Maloof, the man who championed her work and brought it to the public eye.
Here are my top five:
The scene caught my attention because characters from different universes were interacting. In addition, I also appreciate the contrast of black and white and the dynamism she captured. I like the drawing that the light makes in the right corner of the photograph and how it ends, ending in the nun of dark habit that merges in the background and almost camouflages.
The sad expression of the clown and the expectation break are the highlight of the image.
I like how the lines of force of this photography were well-placed, and the use of negative space. In addition, there is a certain atmosphere of suspense, and we have the impression that something will happen at any time.
I absolutely love the frame. The idea of using the window as a frame brings an atmosphere to the image that would be totally different if it had approached and ignored this element. The place that Vivian occupies and places the viewer, passes the feeling that we are watching from afar without anyone noticing, fascinates me.
Last but not least, we have this photograph of the two boys that perfectly portrays social and racial inequality in the United States. In the background, we also see a white man who, like the little boy in front, is having his shoes shined by a black person.
Thank you for reading it all!
I hope you enjoyed getting to know a little of Vivian Maier’s universe.
Stephanie.
Source: http://www.vivianmaier.com/