Born in 1926, Vivian Maier had spent her life photographing the world without ever promoting her work: of the 140,000 shots, only 5% were developed. Maloof sums up all the questions sparked by this unknown woman. This was a feat in itself, but the story had only just begun. John Maloof recounts and reenacts his discovery in the documentary Finding Vivian Maier, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2015. The market went wild: experts, exhibitions, books… Everyone was in agreement about the find, even the New York Times spoke of “a new candidate for the pantheon of great 20th-century street photographers.” Yet Vivian Maier lived on in total anonymity, and it was only an obituary in 2009 announcing her death at age eighty-three, that gave a first clue to the buyer. This story began in 2007 with John Maloof, a twenty-five-year-old real-estate agent, who, at a blind auction, bought tens of thousands of Vivian Maier’s negatives, and quickly realized they had a lot of potential - especially when Allan Sekula bought a few prints and suggested that he should not post this work on Flickr. With Vivian Maier, “There are no answers without questions” Vivian Maier is the story of an autodidact: an unknown photographer who, unbeknownst to her, becomes a global phenomenon, and yet remains impossible to track even as the whole world is enthralled by her photographs. Vivian Maier, Chicago, 1970s © The Estate of Vivian Maier.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |