Vivian Maier is one of the most talked about photographers in recent months and as part of the London Street Photography Festival, her work was exhibited for the first time in the UK.
Maier was an amateur street photography who’s body of work is based in New York and Chicago from the 1950s up until 1970s. In Chicago she worked as a nanny for the Gensburg family where she had access to a dark room allowing her to develop her own black and white films. It is said that she never left her house without her camera and was obsessive about taking pictures.
During those years she took about 100,000 photographs focusing on the marvels and peculiarities of American life. Her streetscapes elevated and dignified the characters she shot. She was particularly drawn to those less well off in society and her work embraces the down and outs in society, the people living in the rough part of town and children with little in life.
In the 1970s Maier moved to using colour and with that move her focus moved slightly away from the people she was so obsessed with capturing in black and white. In colour she shifts to shooting graffiti, newspapers and the artefacts of a modern city.
It wasn’t until 2007 that her work was discovered with all her undeveloped films being sold off at auction. John Maloof being the purchaser has since dedicated his time to bringing her work to life and reconstructing her archive.
This exhibition consists of forty eight framed images in black and white and colour together with a selection of her silent films.
I particularly liked the streetscapes in black and white and the portraits of the children, beggars and old people she took in Chicago and New York. In her work I could see the elements of design I have been studying at work – the implied triangles, diagonals, rhythm and the relationships between points. I also feel she made good use of contrasts – young and old, rich and poor, old and new and light and dark.
The one drawback of this exhibition was the fact that the light was reflected on the glass frames making it difficult to see the actual pictures over your own reflection. I first thought this was light coming from the windows of the German Gymnasium building but the building lights were also accountable.
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