Vivian Maier • An Analysis

During this session we were introduced to the work of Vivian Maier and the importance of context and cropping. Vivian Maier was a secret photographer and was not discovered internationally until she died in 2009. Her work was found in a storage bin in the USA, and after the finder tried to track her down, her work became recognised for being a fantastic street photographer.

Above is Vivian Maier, when a person bought the storage bin at an auction, he found between 100,000-150,000 negatives, 3,000 prints, 700+ rolls of the unprocessed film and a collection of home movies and audio recordings. This woman, who was a nanny by trade, was never recognised as a photographer, and practiced her "hobby" in secret, but turned out to be one of the most talked about street photographers of all time. She travelled the world documenting people and places that she found and has a wide collection of imagery of hundreds of different people. She visited Los Angeles, Maila, Bangkok and Italy, as well as a variety of other places. She used a Rolliflex camera during her early years, but then moved on to using colour film on a Leica.

This is one of my favourite photographs that Vivian Maier took, and is based on the face the person is looking directly at the camera. It almost looks posed, but we can tell it is street photography because of Vivian Maier's typical style. In the trailer for the Vivian Maier film which is being release round about now, one of the people who knew her said that judging by her photographs, she gained the trust of people instantly as they were able to look directly at the camera without seemingly being asked too.

I find it hard to believe that such a fantastic street photographer can have kept her talent secret for her entire life, she had such a passion and drive to capture the beauty of people she had never met before. I love the simplicity of her photographs, the way people simply gaze into the cameras lens without a care in the world with regards to who this woman is and why she is taking their photograph. She has such an elegance within her photography, it is something I admire and would like to have within my street photography. It has also given me the drive to go out on the streets and capture more traditional black and white street photographs and spend more time analysing the work of her. I have decided I am going to purchase her book of work, as I admire her work greatly.