Profundities & Oddities, Discovering Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier, undated.  Self portrait.

Chicago historian and collector John Maloof discovered an art world wonder.  After acquiring a collection of street photographs in 2007, he was oblivious to the fact that it would turn out to be one of the most enigmatic and significant art discoveries of our time.  Maloof bought the contents of an abandoned storage unit for a meager price tag of $400 and inside were photographic riches beyond his wildest imagination.  He accidently unearthed over 100,000 negatives and roughly 700 undeveloped rolls of film snapped by one of the United States most talented and unknown photographers, Vivian Maier.

Vivian Maier is a miraculous modern day mystery, a woman who spent the better part of 40 years capturing the landscape and faces around her, in their purest form, on film.  Maier was a deeply private woman, by where many of the people who knew her had absolutely no idea that she would spend countless hours roaming around documenting a beatific logic, in persons and places.  All in secret.  Her work is raw and literal, unambiguous and engaging.  My fabulous artist friend, Kelly Thompson, who is a marvel in her own right, introduced me to the work of Vivian Maier and I’m so glad she did.  I have been pouring over her images and her story all morning and cannot seem to get enough.  Her uncanny ability to make the ordinary extraordinary is breath-taking.

From the puzzle pieces currently assembled, Vivian Maier was guarded and private, an unmaterialistic sort and sternly independent but not all too shy to share her liberal worldview to anyone who listened.  While much of her life story is slowly being unraveled, we know she worked as a nanny for most of her life while surreptitiously amassing a large body of photographic work, mostly with a Rollieflex camera.

I find her work just as polarizing as her person.  She is fascinating and I wonder, for being such a private artist, what she would think of all the posthumous success and accolades that accompany her work and name.  Her body of work is a prime example of the human spirit’s ability to triumph through art.  It is a rare thing for an artist to be so prolific and talented and lack arrogance and the need for attention.  I suppose her pretentions are evident through her solitary enjoyment of taking photographs but I have to wonder if she even knew how brilliant she was.  I love that she did it for the sheer love of the act, not for the rewards.  Her eccentricities are a dime a dozen it seems but her capacity for seeing the world through a camera was overwhelmingly sublime.

I look forward to discovering more of this woman’s story, researching, reading and admiring her stunning photographs.

The whole reason I became enamored with Vivian Maier was because Kelly shared a movie trailer about her on Facebook.  Maloof and ‘Bowling for Columbine’ filmmaker Charlie Siskel made a film that chronicles her life and impact she’s had on the art world posthumously.  After viewing the trailer I curled up trying to fall asleep excited to wake up so I could learn everything about her.  Her work has earned comparisons to critically acclaimed artists like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Diane Arbus and rightly so.

I am moved by her quietude.  I am besotted by her keen eye.  I am intrigued by her life story and grateful that John Maloof purchased the contents of an abandoned storage unit that housed an artistic miracle, one I am reveling in and will share with everyone I know. 

Maier lost ownership of her storage locker for non-payment causing her to be seperated from her life's work.  The children she cared for ultimately became her caregivers in the autumn of her life.  She died at 83 in 2009.  A formidable woman, a talented artist, with no formal training and no network of peers.  Amazing.

In propinquity,

Nic

I was JAZZED to see the bank's name.  So cool!