I am a huge fan of photography, though my own photography skills do need a lot of work! Looking at the different amateur photographers’ work that is out there, I have to admit I have a little case of the green eyed monster mixed with huge admiration when it comes to the quality of the plethora of amazing work you can find. The one thing I do love to do is to go to exhibitions and look at different photographs that show a little bit of the world from the picture taker’s point of view. One area of photography I can spend hours looking at is documentary photography, photojournalism in particular. It’s so refreshing and thought provoking to look at current events at a particular point of history through the witness of a camera lens. In a world where crazy, and unfortunately horrific events take place it is necessary to see them for us to understand the true emotion or wonder felt at that time. That is the power of photographs.
But in amongst all this, I stumbled across a photographer whose photographs were left undeveloped until after her death. Vivien Maier's photographs have now become a great archival treasure, providing a now huge following an opportunity to view the past through this normal, unsuspecting person’s eyes. Vivien Maier was an American amateur photographer who also worked as nanny; bouncing back between New York, Chicago and other places on her travels. Throughout her life, she documented different parts of cities she visited through their change, capturing the lives of the unseen people who lived and were part of those busy metropolises, who have now all but disappeared except now forever captured on Maier’s pictures.
Maier’s work came to light in 2007 when her trove of secretly hidden negatives was found at a local thrift auction house in Chicago, with around 100,000 negatives making up her body of work. That’s one pair of shoes I wish I had been in when they were discovered! So much mystery must have surrounded them, and the amount of excitement when they were developed must have been palpable. Presently, around 90% of her work has been reconstructed and brought to the public eye thanks to John Maloof, with an official website dedicated to displaying Maier's work to a global audience. That's some change from being hidden in a storage locker where she had originally stowed them away! A book of her work is due to be released later this year, as well as a documentay film planned for 2012 that hopes to look into more detail the photographs that surrounded her life.
What I love about Vivien Maier’s work is that she managed to catch all those hidden peculiarities and endearing details of an urban environment behind all the glamorous, tourism shots you usually find. From the fashion, the realities of city life in lost but fond decades to capturing those faces that you would pass but will never see again; the photos have helped to shape it all. All the details you see define that particular time, but the people in the photos help give an emotive and human element to the picture. Photos in particular of a holding of a hand, the crying of a child and a couple embraced which can all evoke a heartfelt, warming feeling in anyone. Other photos help show the nitty gritty of urban society, with the different characters that walked the streets all of diverse distinction. That is part of why Vivien’s work is so exceptional and unique.
The fact she hid her work for all those years into an unintentional photographic time capsule gives the photos a sentimental value for you as the viewer. The images capture normal people in a busy, chaotic 20th century urban setting that we can recognise today and Vivien Maier’s photographs help slow everything down and help us stop and look as she did, at what there was and what there could be. A stranger who helped capture beautiful and endearing moments in life.
Take a look and appreciate Vivien’s work, but I warn you, it becomes a strange but sweet voyeuristic addiction looking through the huge archive!
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