Gender and art

Vivian Maier worked all her life as a children’s nanny. In her spare time she would go into the city armed with her camera. Between 1950 and 1990 she took thousands of street photographs, mostly in black and white, later also in colour. The results of these 'expeditions' are diverse, but portraits of children, vagrants and the black community in Chicago and New York in the 1950s and 1960s predominate.

It was only after her death at the age of 83, that her photographic work was discovered by the realtor John Maloof. He was looking for historic photos of a neighbourhood in Chicago and came across a lot of undeveloped films and negatives at an auction. Only when he was developing them did he realise the great talent he was dealing with.
The discovery of Maier’s work came as a bombshell. She is compared to talents like Lisette Model, Gary Winogard and Diane Arbus.

For the ‘Vivian Maier, The Discovery of a Photographer’ exhibition a selection was made from the large archive of about 150,000 negatives, 3,000 prints and 2,000 rolls of film. Some 120 photos, mostly in black and white, are exhibited in the refectory of St. Peter’s Abbey, along with several 8mm movies.

Vivian Maier. The discovery of a photographer

27/06/2014 - 17/08/2014

St. Peter's Abbey, Ghent, Belgium

"An incredible story. Vivian Maier was a nanny who lived in Chicago for most of her life and passed away in 2009 at the age of 83. Little more is known about her, except that she was an avid street photographer. Her work was discovered at an auction in 2007, more than 100,000 negatives and undeveloped rolls of film, sold by a storage facility who were cleaning out her locker for delinquent rent. Here is a small sampling of Vivian Maier’s stunning work from the Maloof Collection, spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s. Many of the photos, if they had any information at all, only provided a year and/or city."

Admirers struggle to reconcile Vivian Maier’s posthumous reputation as an artist with her work as a nanny.

Vivian Maier was the archetypal self-taught  photographer with a keen sense of observation and an eye for composition. She  was born in New York in 1926, but spent part of her childhood in France before  returning to New York in 1951 when she started taking photos. In 1956, she moved  to Chicago, where she lived until her death in 2009. 

Her talent is comparable with that of the major figures of American street  photography such as Lisette Model, Helen Levitt, Diane Arbus and Garry  Winogrand. The exhibition presented at the Château de Tours by the Jeu de Paume,  in partnership with the Municipality of Tours and diChroma photography, is the  largest ever exhibition in France devoted to Vivian Maier. It includes 120 black  and white and colour gelatin silver prints from the original slides and  negatives, as well as extracts from Super 8 films she made in the 60s and  70s.

Vivian Maier (1926-2009).  A Photographic Revelation

Nov 09, 2013 — Jun 01, 2014

Chateau de Tours

More information at Jeu de Paume, Paris

http://www.jeudepaume.org/index.php?page=article&idArt=2035&lieu=10