Vivian Maier was an amateur street photographer who left behind over 100,000 negatives when she died in 2009. She never showed her work to anyone, and it was by chance that someone discovered her work in a box at an auction after her death. Even though she never spoke to anyone about her photos, I think she photographed in a way that her opinions of the people and situations are present in the final image. Her photographs are thematically similar in that she chose to take very honest, narrative, unbiased portraits, freezing her subjects in the black and white square format from her TLR. I enjoy how her work explores the relationships between her and her subject, whether they were complete strangers, or one of her nanny charges that she looked after for years. Her website: http://www.vivianmaier.com/
Sorry for the late comment, my computer/internet wouldn't let me sign onto here and let me comment (weirdest\most frustrating thing ever), but here it is now:
ReplyDeleteIt's sad that none of these images were discovered or shown when Maier
was alive. You're right in that they're so honest; every time i scroll
back up and back down through these photos, the images become more and
more familiar to me (it might also be just because i've seen these
images before). The way the people interact within each frame and
depict some sort of intensity (even the first image of the silhouetted
family is dramatic - it's a silhouette). I think i'm just attached to
snapshots of raw emotion, and these portraits do that very well.