The photography of Vivian Maier is an apt representation of the dichotomy at the heart of a very private person. Prolific in her image taking and yet intensely secretive, she took photographs for over 40 years...
The photography of Vivian Maier is an apt representation of the dichotomy at the heart of a very private person. Prolific in her image taking and yet intensely secretive, she took photographs for over 40 years without ever showing them to another person, with the collection only surfacing when the unit where Maier had stored the negatives sold them for non-payment of bills in 2007. It was an electrifying discovery, featuring over 100,000 images of the Chicago and New York streets stretching from the 1950s well into the 1990s; a treasure trove of vignettes showing the quirks and banality, the ugliness and beauty of the American cityscape.
Maier died, still unlauded, in 2009, but since then she has been the subject of a number of international retrospectives and exhibitions, with the latest, A Life Discovered, running in the Merry Karnowsky Gallery until January next year. Her life story has long been largely shrouded in mystery and, despite attempts to fill the gaps of the jigsaw, Maier remains a shadowy figure throughout the exhibition, content to chronicle and document events and passers by without imposing upon them. In many cases her subjects seem oblivious of her presence, whether it’s an old lady, bedecked in sunlight, lost in thought on a tram, two women chatting outside a theatre, or a trio of strangers frozen in a line, all wearing banana yellow in different forms.
"Her subjects seem oblivious of her presence, whether it’s an old lady, bedecked in sunlight, lost in thought on a tram, two women chatting outside a theatre, or a trio of strangers frozen in a line"
Where the subjects have seen the camera, they stare disconcertingly down the lens. Details are captured – the obese knees of a woman waiting at traffic lights, a bald spot amid auburn frizz, the scruffy, undarned dress worn over immaculate seamed stockings – but they are noted with interest, not mockery. There is humour and humanity running through all the pictures – clearly the result not only of forty years of practice, but also of forty years of working as a nanny and caregiver. This is a people’s photographer, chronicling her world with self-taught skill and natural talent, and the exhibition is a fascinating window onto the lives of the people who crossed her path every day.
A Life Discovered is at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles, until January 28 2012.
