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I remember being introduced to Vivian Maier’s work years ago when I was still working at B&H Photo. Folks thought that it was incredible, and indeed, there’s a great reason why we’ve mentioned her so many times on this site. There are incredible female street photographers out there, but in many ways, Vivian Maier and the work she did broke the patriarchial dam that kept the River Femme of great photographers back. Several exhibits around the world have showcased her Vivian’s best work. The latest at Fotografiska New York is putting the spotlight on her images that haven’t been seen before. From my honest self, there’s probably a great reason why these haven’t been seen before.
Vivian Maier: Unseen Work is on display at Fotografiska New York until the end of September, when the museum claims they will be moving to a temporary new location. Go see it as soon as you can.
The Importance of This Exhibit
John Maloof, the man who found Vivian Maier’s work, was part of a panel before the exhibit opened. He agreed with others that Vivian’s picture-taking skills were quite high from the start and never seemed to improve at all. Instead, they just stayed consistent. That fact is true of anyone gifted with the ability to connect their emotions and technical skills together to clearly understand one another when both sides are speaking their common second language. But she also, perhaps, didn’t care very much for “improvement” as she was very shy and private about the work she did.
If you’re not familiar with who she is, most of the world wouldn’t have been either if John hadn’t discovered her work and put it in front of the right people. To many, she’s one of the greatest street photographers ever.
The whole point of editing isn’t just moving sliders in Lightroom or burning the highlights in an image to get more details. Editing also includes a culling process — which is akin to removing the green stems and dirty skin of a carrot so that you may enjoy it. And to be forthright, John and his collaborators did an exceptional job of culling her images to showcase only the best work in the first place. Some of the newest images are quite aesthetic — but many leave you wondering the intentions of why she shot each image. More importantly, they leave me wondering why these images needed to be in a museum in the first place.
Fotografiska New York does well what it always excels at — making images look like the full moon amongst a sea of covetous stars. They do this much better than many of the dedicated photo galleries and they make ICP’s galleries look like the work of a brash college intern. Their exhibits use colored paint on the walls to help visitors figure out various things about the exhibit. It’s a tactic that others, like the Brooklyn Museum, have adapted.
The images presented showcase lots of what many photography groups and circles consider elementary. They include:
Distance from her subjects
The random back of a stranger’s head
Shadows
Mirror selfies
Yet, at the same time, we see random photographs of children. In today’s world, Vivian might’ve been treated with far more disparagement for photographing all these children without some sort of intent being present. To that end, she also would’ve kept her work very private. She would’ve needed to be social with the parents to help them understand why she photographed the children in the first place.
Additionally, we see several images of people who—and it can’t be said any other way—look as radiant as the silver sun appears to summer’s devotees.
A Tale of Two Exhibits in the Same Room
Nearly all the work lacks emotional connection and, instead, speaks to the idea of voyeurism with a sprinkle of envy. To that end, the work is born of loneliness, and through many of the images, we don’t see many acts of intimacy or human connection between others. Instead, the work is from the lens of someone who yearns to be more intimate with the folks around her.
My background, however, is as a trained photojournalist in the tech newsroom, in the classroom, and as a man who started at Magnum Photos. Good street photography to me is either a candid moment, something funny, something emotional, intimate, etc. It blends both expressive artistic merit and stirs a feeling in you. But for most of the work, that’s not happening at all.
When viewing the newly presented work of Vivian Maier, I took a friend who specifically asked me to come. She’s around 20 years older than I am, has a deep affinity for the arts, is a NY native the way I am, is an artist herself on the side, and is also a mother to children around my age. She loved the exhibit — while I left feeling not overwhelmed or underwhelmed, just whelmed.
Vivian Maier Was Lonely
But what we were both able to agree on is that Vivian Maier was quite a lonely woman. On our way back home, my friend and I discussed how society has a problem with loneliness. We spend so much time online on social media and not enough time doing things we love with people we emotionally connect with. We also forget how to be social and talk with one another — which is a point that my other friend Ibarionex Perello of the Candid Frame agrees with me on. It’s one that I truly just don’t understand myself, though, as I’m low vision and formerly classified as legally blind. For me to survive, I often have to be knowledgeable and learn how to speak to other people. It befuddles me that a society of people blessed with correctable to perfectly correctable eyesight can’t understand that saying hello to the person next to them will most likely not warrant that they’ll be killed. Instead, it might start a conversation.
On the NYC subway, lots of folks don’t speak to one another on the subway. But growing up, my father and I both would do so on occasion.
Do we, as a society, truly need to put up a stink face to keep people away from us at all times? Or do we need to acknowledge that we’re all lonely and insanely frightened of the people next to us? As a person of color, I often work to overdress and look my very best so as not to make people feel scared of me. In the end, if we just find a way to speak to one another from a place of love and understanding, we truly can all coexist so long as we understand mutual needs.
I truly feel that this lesson is at the heart of this exhibit, yet the text on the wall doesn’t adequately address it. I implore everyone to remember this as they view the Vivian Maier exhibit at Fotografiska.
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