What Vivian Maier saw in color (2018) | Hacker News Reader

What Vivian Maier saw in color (2018)

newyorker.com

47 pointsoxonia11 comments

Great article.

The article also mentions another artist who led a remarkable life:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger

He wrote, over 60 years, a 15,145 page illustrated fantasy novel, as a janitor who had had a very, very difficult life. At first, I initially couldn't process that figure and automatically read it as 15,000 words, but, NO!, it's 15,145 pages. Unbelievable.

I had never before heard of either of these extraordinary artists, but my day is already better for having learned of their lives and works.

The interesting part of her work is that unlike other photographers who not only took photos but had the chance to edit them, someone else discovered a bunch of negatives she left behind. So others came in later to turn them into what you see.

Anyone who has shot photos (film or digital) knows how much effort goes into the editing process.

I love her photographs and her story, I just find it fascinating to think about this detail, especially when contextualizing her with other artists.

The fact that she did no editing makes her photos more impressive in a lot of ways.

At the same time there were other photographers with that approach, who left processing to others and/or opted for no editing; e.g.:

> He believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He showcased this belief by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation. He insisted that his prints be left uncropped so as to include a few millimeters of the unexposed negative around the image area, resulting in a black frame around the developed picture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson

Yep. It was a little shocking when I learned that about HCB a while ago. Totally agree.

…and she will never know how famous she became! Here is a true artist, one that never seeked to be appreciated as one. I’m such a fan.

The actual story is that she was photographing on her free time and the rest of her days were spent caring for children of some rich family. When she died, the rich family were the only people who could inherit her stuff. What they saw was not only pretty, but they saw an opportunity. They began marketing right away and made her a well known photographer and kept all the money as rights holder.

This is a story of exploitation of someone talented in a system designed to waste her life.

Thanks for this. For anyone interested there's a fantastic documentary about her called Finding Vivian Maier - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finding_Vivian_Maier

Agreed. It's also free to stream.

I've seen it a couple of times and I keep marveling at the sheer strangeness of how it all played out.

https://archive.is/MHzBO

The story of Maier is also re-told in a beautiful tome by a French artist:

Not knowing about who Maier was, I picked this up at a local book fair because of the way the compositions in the panels reminded me of photography. Only by talking to the author at the fair did I realize that she told the story of some of Maier's best known photographs, and that's why it looked the way.

Anyhow, if you speak french, I wholeheartedly recommend it:

https://peinture-fraiche.be/en/book/vivian-maier-a-la-surfac...

Previous discussion:

What Vivian Maier saw in color (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19498483 - March 2019 (17 comments)

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