Pamela Bannos, a sort of Vivian Maier expert, came to Lawrence University and gave a lecture on the story behind Vivian Maier and why she took such interest in her.
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| Vivian Mair: self-portrait |
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| Vivian Maier: self-portrait |
I already knew a bit about who Vivian Maier is because my dance teacher, Rebecca Salzer, choreographed and performed a dance based on Maier's found photography.
The mystery behind Vivian Maier is the fact that during her 40 years as a nanny, she took more than 100,000 photographs (primarily of people and city landscapes).. however, she never showed them to anybody. They only became visible to the public eye when John Maloof, a local Chicago historian and collector, found them. So that raises the question.... why didn't she ever show her photographs to anyone? Why did she keep them locked in a storage closet of her apartment.
Bannos, being a photography professor at Northwestern, was mainly intrigued in Vivian Maier's photography equipment, and tracing her whereabouts through the photographs themselves. I found what Bannos discovered about Maier to be quite interesting. Most of the public view Vivian Maier as a nanny who practiced photography, but Bannos finds her to be a photographer who happened to be a nanny.
Through studying the photographs, she found that Maier was actually well-versed in photography seeing as she knew how to use the most up-to-date cameras at the time and was able to intentionally capture moments how she wanted them -- where that be in deep focus, or shallow focus, etc.
Pamela Bannos opened my eyes to view Vivian Maier is another light. Instead of viewing her as a nanny who happened to take photographs, it is truly the other way around. Photography was her life and devoted it to the camera.
My favorite part of this post is that you elaborate on one of the most important parts of Bannos's lecture - the fact that Maier should be viewed as a photographer who happened to be a nanny, rather than a nanny who happened to practice photography. Bannos made it clear throughout her lecture that Maier is somewhat under appreciated in the art world, and I think you really reflected this idea in this post. Nicely written!
ReplyDeleteI agree that her lecture was intriguing in the way that her lecture allowed everyone to see Maier in a new light. I think that she was unappreciated for her time. I'm not sure how people would react to her photographs if she lived/created art in today's society. I'm trying to imagine her with an iPhone or one of those Hipster Polaroid cameras and making a living.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the style of her photographs, I think that her photographs would remain the same, but society would not appreciate her art as much as they are now. I think the fact that her photographs were discovered "as a part of a past element" helped her image.
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