Sunday 24 April 2011

Maier’s Streetscapes


The Vivian Maier website went live this week and it certainly didn't disappoint. For those of you unfamiliar with the Vivian Maier story, it all started with a box full of negatives purchased at an auction by John Maloof hoping they would form part of a separate project he was working on. The boxed negatives turned out to be just part of a massive body of work by Vivian Maier.

What makes the photographs even more fascinating is the fact that Maier wasn't a pro photographer but a nanny who would simply go out taking photographs on her days off, capturing the character of the people and places around her. The images she took are just quite simply superb and date from the early 1950's through to the 1990's.

The website does a fabulous job of bringing together the images and the remarkable story of a woman who left behind a collection of over 100,000 negatives, more than 3,000 prints, hundreds of rolls of film, home movies, audio tape interviews, and various other items that Maier kept from view during her life. The site has a varied collection of images that I'd certainly recommend having a look through.

Alongside the new website, a film and a book are also in the works and due to come out soon. The Vivian Maier Website can be found at www.vivianmaier.com

1 comment:

Streetscapes said...

The black and white pictures possess a rare glow in capturing an emotion that a colour one lacks.