Street Photographer "Discovered" after death

[Chicken Pox]

Vivian Maier Video
Vivian Maier Blog

quote from Chicago Tonight, 22nd December:
"We learn the amazing story of Vivian Maier, a Chicago nanny who took more than 100,000 photos during her lifetime but never showed them to anyone. Now that she's gone and her photos have been discovered, some say she may rank among the top street photographers of the 20th century."

And a 'blog scanning some of the 100,000 photos found! Incredible. Just amazing that this woman, a nanny, spent all her days off taking photos. And never showed anybody a single picture.

Ironically came across this on a watch forum, think g3org3y might be interested, hopefully a few of you might want to have a look.

Happy New Year PH snappers

[dibbly dobbler]

Happy New Year to you too Mr P

Excellent find - some amazing stuff on there.

[JimNotJon]

What a truley remarkable woman. It's a real shame she didn't share her love and recieve the praise and admiration from people that would of seen her work.

[Kermit power]

Blimey, there are some wonderful shots there!

Going completely off topic, why is it that photos like these shot on black & white film can look so right, whereas modern day digital monochrome conversions almost invariably look so wrong? Is it just that people only convert shots which didn't work out in colour, or is there actually a difference due to the way the conversion takes place?

I generally find modern B&W work to just be dingy and depressing whatever the subject matter, whereas there's a lot of vibrant life shining out from many of these.

[Simpo Two]

Kermit power said:

Going completely off topic, why is it that photos like these shot on black & white film can look so right, whereas modern day digital monochrome conversions almost invariably look so wrong? Is it just that people only convert shots which didn't work out in colour, or is there actually a difference due to the way the conversion takes place?

First, BW togs tend to see scenes in tones not colours, which can be a distraction to composition and lighting. Second, there are infinite ways to convert a colour image to BW. The usual quickfix of 'desaturate' or 'grayscale' are invariably flat and disapointing IMHO.

I think part of what makes some of these photos interesting is that they capture the period. You could go out and take equivalent photos in 2011 but they wouldn't have the same atmosphere.

Edited by Simpo Two on Sunday 2nd January 08:39

[Dogsey]

The Independant covered this story some time ago, what an amazing body of work!

[Gemm]

Ok, the story itself is interesting but am I the only one who thinks the images are nothing special?? Maybe I just don't get this street photography thingy...... *Waits to get shot*

[Nick M]

Gemm said:

Ok, the story itself is interesting but am I the only one who thinks the images are nothing special?? Maybe I just don't get this street photography thingy...... *Waits to get shot*

I think street photography, particularly pictures taken some time ago, needs to be viewed in the right context, where it captures day to day happenings which are very much of their time.

For me, some of the pictures catch my eye, others don't, but as a body of work it captures some interesting moments in time.

I think the thing to bear in mind is that this person didn't hold herself out to be a photographer, and as such there is perhaps a greater sense of the photographs being taken because they were interesting to the person with the camera, rather than pictures where a photographer has gone out hunting for scenes to capture.