Vivian Maier: A life's work seen for first time | Hacker News Reader

Vivian Maier: A life's work seen for first time

bbc.co.uk

89 pointsrythie51 comments

I submitted this last week but it didn't get any traction:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2095598

John Maloof, a 29-year-old eBay entrepreneur and real estate agent, is now principal cheerleader in the effort to find a niche for Ms. Maier at the pantheon of modern photography. He is only about one-tenth of the way into the task of scanning and archiving 100,000 negatives of hers in his possession, working with his friend Anthony Rydzon. And they have yet to develop several hundred rolls of black-and-white film and about 600 color rolls.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/new-street-photogra...

The photos are truly extraordinary.

Watch this terrific segment too - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWEDOnBfDUI

And for those of you fortunate enough to reside in Chicago - http://www.explorechicago.org/city/en/things_see_do/event_la...

It's kind of an interesting question -- usually importance in the art world is a combination of excellence and influence. So even if you hate Andy Warhol, you have to admit the guy was influential, so he deserves his place in art history.

Now we have a case of someone whose work was excellent, but for obvious reasons could not possibly have influenced anyone else. Where should she be in the history of art?

The same place as Van Gogh and Emily Dickinson. She had little influence while she was alive, but will gain more as time goes on. Posthumous fame is a cliche in the arts.

van Gogh only got serious about painting in the last decade of his life, and even then he was pretty well known.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumous_fame_of_Vincent_van_...

Toulouse-Lautrec even challenged another artist to a duel over the worth of van Gogh's paintings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh_chronology#189...

I'm only an amateur aficionado of photography, but Vivian Maier seems a bit different. The quality is undeniable but the style seems a bit derivative or antique by 2010 standards. At least so far, I don't see territory that hasn't been well covered by other street photographers.

Maybe more treasures will be unearthed from the collection, though.

A thought just struck me: maybe she just couldn't afford, or never had time, to get her negs developed. What sort of photographer might she have become if she could have closed that loop just a bit faster, or easier?

An interesting addendum: John Maloof, who 'dicovered' her work, as it were, decided to try and locate her after some time. His search turned up her obituary. It had been posted the previous day.

The headline makes me think.

The article admits that we know virtually nothing about Vivian Maier. There is nothing that implies her life was "lost" in her eyes, nothing to prove that she lived differently than she would have liked to have lived. her work was nearly lost to the glare of publicity but would have been our loss, not hers.

It is ambiguous: "a lost (life's work)" is the intended interpretation.

"rediscovered" is more like it.

Of course you could talk about "a (rediscovered life)'s work" in an interesting way too...

Kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/800508197/finding-vivian...

Just pledged. Currently it's got $67K+ pledged for its $20K goal

Neat story with many parallels to other areas of life (yes, even the hacker's life).

Side note: I enjoy the comments, but some remind me of Reddit. I think there may be some inbreeding going on here. I say this in good humor.

Very poignant story! Her photos are exquisite. Her solitary and obscure life brought tears to my eyes on this cold Chicago morning.

Yet, this story gets only 3 points (so far)? Guys, there are more things to heaven and earth than tech and financial stuff. I hope it makes to first page.

There is a analogy with failed startups, in that she created something of value, but was never was able to promote it (assuming she tried).

In other discussions I've seen people raise the copyright issues. Her estate owns the rights to these works, not John Maloof. But I don't think anyone except her heirs or other beneficiaries would have standing to sue him. They're either non-existent (she had no known children) or not interested. I'm afraid that won't stop people from causing problems for him once there's money involved.

I don't see how there could be much legal standing for that position. If Maloof bought the original negatives and especially if the Meier estate has not retained any copies of the work then he's got an enormously strong case to having bought not just a copy of the work but the work itself and the rights to distribute it.

> If Maloof bought the original negatives and especially if the Meier estate has not retained any copies of the work then he's got an enormously strong case to having bought not just a copy of the work but the work itself and the rights to distribute it.

Copyright law doesn't work that way. This argument is expressly addressed in 17 USC 202: "Ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, is distinct from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied.

"Transfer of ownership of any material object, including the copy or phonorecord in which the work is first fixed, does not of itself convey any rights in the copyrighted work embodied in the object; nor, in the absence of an agreement, does transfer of ownership of a copyright or of any exclusive rights under a copyright convey property rights in any material object."

(Extra paragraphing added.)

Sure, if I sell you a copy of my novel or of a photograph that doesn't necessarily mean, of itself, that I've transferred ownership of the copyright to that work. Even if I've sold you the original handwritten manuscript or the original photographic slide. Even in the absence of any explicit agreement on my part in regards to the disposition of the copyright. However, if I sell every known copy of the work to you while intentionally depriving myself of any copy and the ability to reproduce copies, then there is a very much stronger case that through that action I've transfered the rights to the work.

As far as I know that seems to be the case here.

fascinating! thanks for posting.

Maier was untrained, but her images are artfully framed and detailed

So much has been accomplished by those who were "untrained, but". I wonder if that says as much about the training as it does about the accomplishments.

I don't think you can really train someone to be an artist or be creative anyway.

Disagreed. I think everyone has the potential for creativity, it just gets scared out of us as we grow up. Teaching someone to paint or take well-structured photographs is pretty much trivial as long as they put in the effort. And once you give somebody a tool to adequately express the way they see the world, most can barely help but be creative.

It depends what you mean by 'an artist'. Consider that every one of us is constantly expressing ourselves, in unique ways and with a unique personality, in language. There's no reason you can't train someone to have similar competency to express themselves in another medium.

People who attend those 'drawing from life' courses invariably are much better by the end of it. I knew a guy who didn't have a lot of artistic flair, but he liked cars and machines. By the end of the course he was producing some really precise, great looking drawings of vehicles and engines.

If you define 'an artist' as someone who's able to move the state of the art, create bold new visions -- well, not everyone may be capable of that. But I think that's an unnecessarily narrow conception of art.

> If you define 'an artist' as someone who's able to move the state of the art, create bold new visions -- well, not everyone may be capable of that. But I think that's an unnecessarily narrow conception of art.

Agreed. I don't think you can 'train' someone to be a cultural revolutionary. Look at Stephen King, he spent virtually his entire life writing stories, the education he received only served to skip him past mistakes he would have run into and figured out by himself sooner or later.

There are however countless thousands of people out there writing nothing more than pulp fiction, entertaining people and probably only making enough cash to help put their kids through college or to pay for a nice vacation next year.

I used to play bass guitar, I used to write my own songs, I knew a few people who genuinely liked them. If I'd have put as much effort into my music as I have writing then I would probably genuinely be a musician right now, but I want to be an author because since I could talk I've been telling stories.

It reminds me of the sculptor who said that he wasn't making the sculpture. "It's already in there. I'm just removing excess material."

Sometimes I feel that our brains are like that. That some of our abilities are inherent. They just have to be set free.

Problem is, search space is too big

http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html [Section: 'Problems']

( embarrassed to admit I probably have a complete cross reference of his essays in my brain :) )

Sounds like a Michaelangelo quote.

It is (according to yesterday's repeat of Star Trek TNG: the episode where Data meets his creator Dr Sung)

Incredible. I just saw that episode yesterday as well (but on YouTube), and that's exactly what came to mind.

I sculpt in stone as a hobby. I'd heard that quote, or variations of it, before I started, and just regarded it as a clever quip artists make. Not really a reflection of the process of carving, which would be much more detailed and painstaking. I was surprised to discover just how true, for me anyway, that quote is.

> "That some of our abilities are inherent. They just have to be set free."

Heavily disagreed. I'm a street photographer myself (self-trained), and Maier's work has been inspiring both from an artistic and motivational perspective.

These abilities aren't "inherent". They take years and years of practice to hone, and a constant criticism of your own work (from yourself or otherwise).

I don't think any photographer ever picked up a camera, figured out how to work it, and then just started taking good work. Bear in mind also that I don't know a single street photographer who's able to shoot anything close to >5% keepers, much less show-ers.

When you view art like this, keep in mind that not only is it a highly selected slice of the artist's entire body of work, but also you are looking at what is most likely their top work at the prime of their abilities. What you don't see are the years of producing forgettable, boring, and downright bad work to get there.

The article talks about 100,000 negatives laying around. This was years of work and probably a daily activity. Hardly qualifies as "inherent".

That reminds me of something I dislike about street photography - there are the Greats - people like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Garry Winogrand, etc. that are positively worshipped in the street photography community.

To the point where anything that they ever produced is automatic gold. People don't seem to account for the fact that, like all other artists, 99% of what these people produced is somewhere between utter crap and not great.

But nope. If it was shot by HCB, it's automatically a divine work gifted to us by the Gods of Photography themselves. Ugh.

There is a difference between the already vetted produce of someone like HCB and the raw produce we are dealing with here. Of course he produced crap, but that crap has never seen the light of day. I doubt anyone wandering upon a pile of thousands of his photographs would consider them automatic gold.

I think the two are orthogonal. People who are driven to create art will keep doing it, growing, learning from other artists they come across; they might seek out more formal training as part of their journey or not.

my own take has been:

talent > training

talent + training > (talent || training)

This brings to mind the wonderful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger who is one of the more well-known examples of outsider artist.

What's the point of photographs like this though?

(philosophical question)

What's the point of philosophy?

(photographical question)

I just said 'philosphical question' so I wouldn't get downvoted for sounding cynical.

Are you saying it is impossible to verbalize the 'point' of photography?

Regardless, sometimes photographs capture remarkable events or spectacular scenes, in which cases the point could be easily understood as 'seeing things you would have liked to have seen but didn't get the chance'

Now in this here collection, almost all the photos are just of strangers on the street. Something you can see everyday with your own eyes. So what is the point?

There are ten thousand answers to your question, but here's the most drab and pedantic of them: No, I absolutely cannot walk out onto the street and see a scene from the 1960s.

There was a fun essay once where someone pointed out the value of photographing everyday objects. Tools, cars, clothes. These are the things that you'll most wish you'd photographed, because they are the most ephemeral. The Grand Canyon looks much as it did in Ansel Adams' day. People look only a bit different than they used to. But the objects are gone. The streets and the buildings are gone.

Movies that capture the essence of a time and place are great for this too. Just re-watched Hitchcock's Vertigo last night and wished I could have stepped back into the San Francisco of fifty years ago...

So really you're asking "what's the point of art?" You could do worse than starting by reading "Art" by Clive Bell.

I don't think it comes to that. My working definition of art is 'human creativity in matters beyond functional necessity' - and the point (ideally) would be to selectively present phenomena/experience for the betterment of the audience.

Here black and white images of everyday urban life have been selected as subject matter. Why? (obviously the images are well framed, but is that all there is to this art? Mechanical_Fish's answer above is reasonable, though)

This is why I recommended Clive Bell: for him the subject matter is irrelevant and what matters is significant form - that combination of colors and shapes that gives rise to an aesthetic experience. Many would say that achieving this aesthetic experience itself is the point. Alternatively, others argue that the subject of art (in this case urban life) allow one to get at the capital-t Truth and meaning of a thing or culture. Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art" examines this with regards to Van Gogh's "A Pair of Shoes," also an interesting read. Of course the real point for anyone is deeply personal, and if you're questioning what that point is, for you there probably isn't one. And that's ok too.

That's why I asked the question - I genuinely wanted to know what other people valued in this collection. Just because I asked doesn't mean I don't have my own reasons for valuing/not-valuing it. I encourage anyone reading to say what they liked about it. Even just a poll of 'do you like them for the content' vs 'do you like them for the prettyness' would be interesting: sometimes it's just good to know what other people are thinking.

What good is a baby?

You forgot: (childish question)

You're saying this collection is going to change into something more useful/poignant in about 15 years?

Have you ever said "hey, look at this!" to someone?

(socratic question)

Yes but not to things like in these particular photos.

I love street photography - know many others who do also. Everyone has a different reason for being in this hobby, but FWIW I'll try to articulate my reasons:

- The capture of the preciousness of everyday life. So many of us wake up, trudge to work, trudge home, go get our groceries, etc etc all without ever noticing the little things in life. Part of why I do street photography is to catch and expose the fact that there are amazing things happening in the most mundane situations - that there are a million interactions and emotions crossing between people, even if, at the surface it's just a bunch of people on a subway train or a crowd walking down the street There are sparks of incredibly deep interaction, ephemeral and fleeting as they may be, all around us every minute. I like to capture and bring them out.

- Documentation with thought. We all have point and shoot cameras, and the prevalence of drunken pictures on Facebook is testament to the human desire to document. Most pictures though, aren't very well composed, and only convey the technical details of the event, and not the emotion that is undoubtedly embodied within. Part of why I love street is that it doesn't have to be extraordinary - sometimes you fall back to a role strictly that of the documentarian, but you can do it with more skill and thought than what most people can do.

The right photograph can rapidly affect one's entire outlook about something, without asking for so much as a look. It's highly efficient that way.

Incidentally, was going to comment that the story reminded me of a great Swedish film from a couple of years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everlasting_Moments

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