Vivian Maier

“Vivian Maier”

These are mere personal thoughts and notes, I have no critique background nor did I receive any formal training fort that field and purpose. But I feel the work of Vivian Maier requires some study.…

La obra de Maier descubre su genio creativo mientras arroja luz sobre la vida de las calles de Chicago y Nueva York en los años cincuenta y sesenta

Vivian Maier’s rare street shots of New York and Chicago on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery

Today’s photo challenge is “half and half” so I chose a few pictures cut in the middle. I was spoiled for choice today. Above is a shop keeper having a smoke at her door-step. Berlin steps, outside the Bundestag building. Olafur Eliasson’s installation at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Reflection of a street off the rooftop of a parked car in Prague. The encounter of two groups of horsemen on “Sword Beach” in Normandy.

The Vivian Maier story has taken another ironic turn as Jeffrey Goldstein (who once owned the second largest collection of Vivian Maier negatives) has

“40年間、乳母や家政婦として生計を立てながら誰にも知られることなく写真を撮り続けたヴィヴィアン・メイヤー。死後、部屋から見つかった膨大なネガや現像写真から、彼女の才能は世界に知れ渡る。暖かな視点と遊び心で映し出された当時のアメリカの路上や街並み。 フィンランド写真美術館5月24日まで。”

Have you ever wondered how many pictures have been taken of you without you realizing it? Tourists, passersby or even street photographers, be it on purpose or not, might have included you in their camera frame when documenting their lives at some point. Maybe a photograph with you in it is hanging on someone’s wall or hiding in a family album, or perhaps you are even being showcased in a gallery or a museum.

A professional nanny for over four decades, Vivian Maier lived her life in the shadows; a strange woman with a secret talent and a veiled past.