Vivian Maier was born on February 1, 1926 in New York City. Around the age of 25 or 26 she started taking photographs, about 100,000 or more pictures by the time she died on April 21, 2009, ninety-nine percent of which she never showed anyone. She worked as a Nanny and/or Housekeeper most of her life using her spare time to photograph in New York City, Chicago, a village in France, and on an eight-month world tour accompanied by her trusted twin-lens Rollie camera hanging from her neck. Her work was discovered two years before she died but she was unaware of it. It included documentary style photography, 8mm film and audio recordings.
Two years before she died, on April 21, 2009 in Chicago, storage lockers where she stored her work and other things were sold at auction for non-payment of the monthly fees. John Maloof bought boxes of negatives and went on to buy more boxes of negatives, undeveloped rolls of film, 8mm and 16mm movie film from other bidders later on. He discovered the inspired work of Vivian Maier and ultimately brought her photography to public attention.
Finding Vivian Maier Documentary. See trailer at JRMartinMedia.
There are currently two documentary films about Vivian Maier. 1)The Vivian Maier Mystery, fifty-three minutes, released in 2013 by BBC.
2) Oscar Nominated, Finding Vivian Maier, 84 minutes, released in 2013/14 by Sundance Selects, directed by John Maoof and Charlie Siskel.
Go to JRMartinMedia for entire article and to view trailer for Finding Vivian Maier.
Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.
Smelling like old paper, film negatives and musty storage, a cloud of old memories slowly filled the air as I opened the venerable Pullman suitcase. Old family photographs, and other pictures I took, some a half a century ago, waited with negatives stored in protective sleeves. There were people, places and faces, including my own, stuck in time. The difficult part was being there in that moment again, retaking the picture or being in the photograph in that place and that time.
Is it possible to smell the heather and feel the morning breeze gently drifting off the English hills in the Lake District, all those years ago? The actual event can’t be relived, but the mind makes magic sometimes. The photograph acts as a visual reminder, conjuring up bits of experience from the archives in the mind, like an artist creating a painting. Wellington boots seen through a tent flap, “two bob” said the woman wearing the boots and collecting the camping fees. This and other memories stored in the same picture.
A black and white picture, taken on a sunny day, of a friend and I standing next to a sports car I owned. The friend and the car are remembered. The city street we’re standing on looks familiar. What was the name of that street? Why were we there in suits and ties? Does the mind have a librarian checking the stacks for this event? It may take a while, but sometimes, a day or two later, the librarian pops up with the information. Events, places, and people in memory are abstract, subjective thoughts lost in context, perspective and time.
The object and the people in a photograph may bring back memories for some time after the picture was taken. How long the memory replays depends on how significant the event and how much attention it was given. Human imagination only needs a few clues to create what feels like a mountain breeze, the smell of a rose or a loved one’s touch. But everything the mind and body experiences in a lifetime is not remembered. In addition what is remembered is a subjective interpretation of the person or event, and so is the photograph.
No dates and places written on the backs of most photos. Still every picture has an inherent date and place in the past, my past and other people’s pasts even if it can’t be fully visited; reflections of a time and place that only exists there on the paper. The face on the paper is not my face anymore. The beautiful woman in the picture no longer looks or is the same. These things only existed for that photographic moment.
I used to think that “I” was the sum of my experiences and memories. But this cannot be. The past is like those old photographs, moments frozen in time that do not exist beyond the shutter’s opening and closing. Here in the present, there is no past, no current me that remains from those pictures; every second this mind and body are changing. The body and mind in the picture no longer exist. Each memory is only a silent sketch, faded a bit more each day. The mind is like that old Pullman suitcase, stuffed full of folders with pictures, some in better shape than others, but all moments frozen in time. However, the mind, like the case may be opened occasionally for time travel to see the past, to imagine and perhaps explore those fleeting moments.
Written by James R (Jim) Martin, Author, Documentary Filmmaker, Photographer and student of Mindfulness.
Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.
ORIGINALLY OPENED IN 1955 THE MUSEM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
A DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBIT AND BOOK
It must be a wonderful experience to walk though this exhibit of photographs documenting “The Family of Man,” and to linger and examine each picture depicting so much human life and activity. No narration and/or interviews are needed, each photograph speaks for itself and then joins the overall collection of pictures creating a myriad of impressions. This exhibit is a testament to the fact that documentary actuality and explorations come in all forms, not just on film or video. The title of the exhibit was inspired by the expression “family of man” found in a speech by Abraham Lincoln.
The Family of Man Exhibit Clervaux
Clervaux, Castle
The Family of Man Exhibit, created by Edward Steichen, is a documentary employing still photographs hung in an exhibition environment. It began life in The Museum of Modern Art, New York and ultimately traveled around the world to thirty-seven countries. It is now housed in Clervaux, Castle in Luxembourg, Edward Steichen’s birthplace. The exhibition is undergoing restoration and will not be open to the public until 2012.
Photographs from the exhibit can be viewed in The Family of Man book version, with an introduction by Steichen and a prologue by Carl Sandburg. While the book cannot give us the same experience as viewing the exhibit, it does present the photographs as a documentary compilation of the exhibit.
In the introduction to the book Steichen writes, “The exhibition, now permanently presented on the pages of this book, demonstrates that the art of photography is a dynamic process of giving form to ideas and of explaining man to man. It was conceived as a mirror of the universal elements and emotions in the everydayness of life – as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.”
Photograph by Dorthea Lange – Migrant Mother
The pictures come from all over the planet. Steichen with the help of his wife and staff culled 503 photographs from the two million photographs submitted by amateurs and professionals. Two hundred and seventy-three photographers, male and female, from sixty-eight countries took the 503 photographs used in the exhibit. Included in these numbers were many photographs from the US Library of congress and Life magazine. The exhibit traveled worldwide during the Cold War. Steichen felt that it might help for the world to see the “essential oneness of mankind.” The photographs are grouped in themes including love, birth, work, play, death, pleasure, pain, fears, hopes, tears and laughter.
All of the photographs in the book are black and white. Photographs that depict love in many forms begin the story of The Family of Man. Not only lovers embracing but also love demonstrated in many forms including the love of parents for their children. There are photographs by well known photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorthea Lange, Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Diane and Allan Arbus, Mathew Brady and many more.
Until 2012 when the exhibit reopens in Luxembourg, the book version of The Family of Man, on its own, is well worth a visit.
