In this week’s class, we watched Finding Vivian Maier (2013). The film reveals two sets of her life: brilliant but anonymous as a nanny for 40 years, she left behind more than 100,000 negatives of Chicago street scenes and street portraits, which were discovered by filmmaker John Maloof at an auction in 2007 and made her widely regarded in photography as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. I was fascinated by her work and her mysterious life.
In 1948-49, Vivian began using a Kodak Brownie Box Camera to photograph buildings and people in the Champsos region of France. But her real career as a photographer began in 1952, in the New York Metropolitan area, where she was inspired in a way that small French villages could not. She started using the Rolleiflex 3.5 camera: This camera has the advantage of concealment. It is hard to imagine how subjects would have posed and expressed themselves if a long gun with a large lens was placed in front of their face. Today, in Beijing and Chengdu’s shopping central, we see so much shoot and run photography, which only adds to the value of Vivian Maier: I’m photographing you, but you better not know it.
street snap in Chengdu Taikoo Li Shopping Central
Vivian didn’t even abide by what was expected of women at the time: elegance and femininity. Instead, she slobbered two feet from the open window, snapping pictures of sleeping men on the side of the street. Her work is not sexy, but it is by no means sexless. She photographed abortion billboards, adult stores and strip clubs. Most of the people in Vivian’s photos are shot from the low angle, which means the camera position is very low, which adds a little bit of grandeur and humor to her characters. Instead of clicking the shutter aimlessly, her style of photography is composed of calm consideration, framing, removing unnecessary elements and then the local customs were collected in black and white film.
Although I like her experience, I don’t like the way John Maloof digs into her life so deep. Vivian’s friends in the documentary said she doesn’t want to be exposed and she will never let this happen.
After discussing the documentary, I went out for the exercise. I asked some passerby for their permission to make a photo of them. It was pretty lucky most of them said yes. And it was kind of funny that a woman on a bike said yes but when the light turned green she just left.
Reference：
Finding Vivian Maier, 2013, Documentary Film, directed by John Maloof & Charlie Siskel. Available at: <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uEpFcaMEsd1IQygGqjfC6Rk9SIUmXdyM/view?usp=drivesdk> (Accessed 12 November 2020).