Vivian Maier - almost never discovered

stillshunter

Super Moderator Emeritus
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Down Under
Name
Mark
Starting a new thread based on the segue, in Boid's recent post on street photography:

Very cool to see things from the 1st person perspective. In my opinion though, the photographer was just taking random photos of people walking around the city. There was one or two photos that were somewhat interesting. I'll go check his website to see his other photos.

I recently purchased the book on Vivian Maier by John Maloof, which seems to be always on backorder in Amazon. To my eyes, Vivian Maier's published photos are simply amazing. I find her approach to street photography more appealing and interesting to me. This might be sacrilegous to some, but I find her photos much more compelling than HCB's photos. Although HCB has a much broader and generalistic approach to street photography.

Thanks for sharing the link to the video Boid.

Armando, thank you so much for the introduction to Vivian Maier. I am absolutely blown away by her work - especially in light of her biography. So glad the world did discover her photos as this is one of the keenest eyes I've come across and include some of the most amazing compositions and tonal images that I've seen. I have to agree that they are certainly comparable to the seminal HCB works. Yet we came this close to having them simply bio-degrade.

For those unfamiliar with her work then I'd invite you to have a gander here.

Meanwhile, for those unfamiliar with her background (which was me only days ago) here an easy intro:
[video=youtube_share;HWEDOnBfDUI]

Again Armando, THANK YOU! :hail:, this is absolutely fabulous. Inspired now to get out there and shoot. And, hey, I don't care if y'all don't appreciate or understand my work because down the track someone will find a box full of my.....oh who am I kidding! :blush:
 
You are welcome Mark. I almost never ever buy photography books, unless they are instructional books. But after watching the video above, seeing the photos posted online, I couldn't help but to get the book. A good number of the images in the book are online. But sometimes, there's just something special about holding a book. Plus, it was a good way to help Maloof finish up developing the rest of the photos.

Every time I look at Maier's photos (or the ones that have been published anyway), I'm just amazed in every possible sense. From a technical standpoint, they look pretty good. But the more important part is that I actually feel an emotional connection with the photos. There's some compelling about them.

I really wish Maloof was able to track Maier down before she passed away. Would have loved to know what she was thinking when she took a particular photo. Or her approach. Or how and why photography was a passion for her, or perhaps something else altogether.
 
I really wish Maloof was able to track Maier down before she passed away. Would have loved to know what she was thinking when she took a particular photo. Or her approach. Or how and why photography was a passion for her, or perhaps something else altogether.
It was pretty clear according to the people who knew her, SORT of, that she wasn't a big talker, or even a little talker. She seems to be one of those people who let her art do the talking. And since she never developed much of her film and never printed ANY of it, it seems pretty clear she didn't even care much about the finished product. She just seemed to love the PROCESS of shooting and interacting - that may have BEEN her method of interacting, since it didn't sound like she was particularly verbal or much of a writer.

So, I'm guessing she might not have said much at all, if given the chance. But I agree it sure would have been interesting to pick her brain, if she'd have allowed it to be picked!

-Ray
 
@Ray - Agreed. Too bad though. That's why I was alluding and totally speculating that photography may have been something else other than the photos themselves.

Something just came across me with what you wrote Ray. Maier didn't even see 99% of photos that we are seeing nowadays!!! Or heck, she didn't see 99.999999% of the photos that she took!

So, in some ways, Maier was almost a Beethoven or Mozart. They had the ability to compose scores of music in their head without ever playing it.

This is just simply jaw-dropping level of amazing, in my humble opinion!!!
 
Her images are absolutely amazing, similarly I also wish Maloof was able to get in contact with her before she passed on, I dont know if she was the type of person who would care what other people thought of her images or if all that mattered was what she thought of them, but I wish Maloof was able to tell her that a great deal of people (myself included) are moved, inspired, amazed, and simply blown away by her work.
 
It was pretty clear according to the people who knew her, SORT of, that she wasn't a big talker, or even a little talker. She seems to be one of those people who let her art do the talking. And since she never developed much of her film and never printed ANY of it, it seems pretty clear she didn't even care much about the finished product. She just seemed to love the PROCESS of shooting and interacting - that may have BEEN her method of interacting, since it didn't sound like she was particularly verbal or much of a writer.

So, I'm guessing she might not have said much at all, if given the chance. But I agree it sure would have been interesting to pick her brain, if she'd have allowed it to be picked!

-Ray

I find this part fascinating. There has been much discussion about her over on the PDML (a Pentax Mailing list). With all the discussion about post-processing, this woman seemed to love the shooting. I can completely empathize with her on this.
 
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