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Vivian Maier - street photographer

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Vivian Maier was a Chicago street photographer whose fascinating work was not known until it was discovered at a sale of her estate a couple of years ago. It consists of hundreds of thousands of negatives and undeveloped film rolls, a few thousand of which have been scanned and a few hundred of which have been exhibited.

http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com/
 
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I came across this the other day, amazing stuff. I spent the whole day reading about her and street photography in general. I wanted to spend the next day in Providence trying some myself, but unfortunately I missed my train and haven't had a free day since. I'll try next week, though I'm really interested in this.
 
Beyond anything normal. This stuff is truly amazing! How could this kind of talent go unrecognized for so long?
 
Ghog said:
Beyond anything normal. This stuff is truly amazing! How could this kind of talent go unrecognized for so long?
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In an interview on WTTW with some former employers, they said that she was very private, but kept a lot of "papers" in her room as well as storage boxes in their basement. She also had a collection of books about famous photographers. So, she was interested in perfecting her photography, apparently, but whether her own opinion of her work can be determined is not clear from what they presented.
 
She certainly had a lot of talent. What a shame those talents were not recognized during her lifetime.
 
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Wonderful... Thanks for sharing.
 
Unfortunately, I think the days of that type of impactful photography are over. With digital, the "value" of each shot is a lot less. Lots of shots by lots of people these days, but in those days each shot had to be thought out. Now a guy can shoot 2-3,000 shots in a weekend and not even remember why he took them.

Of course, on the other side of the coin, a guy may take extra time to find a good shot because there are so many folks out there taking so many shots. I suppose we never know we are looking at history till we look at it from a distance.

I love this photo set. I love street photography. Unfortunately, leftover adolescent shyness of strangers always keeps me from doing this type of work.
 
VinylHanger said:
I love street photography. Unfortunately, leftover adolescent shyness of strangers always keeps me from doing this type of work.
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I feel the same way.
I wonder if the photographer's looks have an effect - if the photographer looks harmless enough and behaves like they belong there, maybe people are more likely to ignore him/her.

When I was at the Racine zoo, I took a picture of the "train" zoo tram. I wanted to catch it stopped and loaded with people, but they started getting off before I could take the shot. A little girl who was one of the first off pointed me out to her mother, and I was getting ready to apologize (although some distance away), but the mother just took her daughter away without acknowledging me. It definitely made me uncomfortable, as I was not trying to make anyone the center of the shot; it just happened.
 
I just saw that there is a street photography contest and festival based in London:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/1101/11011910londondtreetphotoaward.asp

This reminds me that I have seen blogs complaining of the English police harassing photographers for taking pictures in public - seems that they have (at least in the past) given the most attention to those who use larger more expensive gear and carefully set up - as if that is the type most likely to be taking pictures for nefarious purposes.
 
The movie is well worth seeing and is now playing overseas. I especially enjoyed it as she worked near my home town and I recognized some landmarks.
 
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