Found at Auction: The Unseen Photographs of a Legend that Never Was | Hacker News Reader

Found at Auction: The Unseen Photographs of a Legend that Never Was

messynessychic.com

138 pointsttuominen23 comments

Could someone take me through how this John Maloof fellow suddenly has all of the copyrights to these photos?

Clearly the photographer would never have sold these photos and the copyright term would not have expired. The photos would be in the "lost or stolen" category wouldn't they?

If anything at all, they should be (in a perfect world, I know copyright doesn't work this way) public domain if no heir steps forward to claim them.

He owns the negatives. I don't think the article discusses the copyright.

I was one of the early backers in the Kickstarter project, Maier's photography is mesmerizing, although I know nothing about photographs. I don't think they've done a very good job with handling the collection, though. Only a handful photos are available online. The prints are few and are very expensive. I recently bought the book and found both the print quality (all photos had a weird sepia tone, see Amazon comments for more details: http://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Maier-Street-Photographer/dp/15...) and editorial content (no context for the photos, just a skimpy Introduction) not very good.

Still, overall I think John Maloof has done a good job in publicizing Maier's work.

I submitted this 2 years ago but it didn't catch:

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

Thank you!

I wonder, is it possible that something like this may happen after beginning of the internet era?

Like this. Year 2050, some guy accidentally discovers an abandoned site, which is created in 2010. There is a blog, which sparks this future anonymous guy's interst. The guy discovers a link to instagram on this , and then finds out that this website was quite popular back in 2010s, but gone defunct in 2020s. The full photo archive is available though. Curious, this guy downloads the whole archive and encounter amazing photo collection of cats and food on this account. The copyright law is different in 2050, so the guy decides to sell pictures on an world-wide digital auction...

Or maybe it will be no different: a real estate agent finds a small box filled with SD cards and then sells it on a local auction.

This is pretty confusing: "John Maloof purchased a box of never-seen, never-developed film negatives of an unknown ‘amateur’ photographer for $380 at his local auction house."

If they were negatives, they were developed. Was this undeveloped film? Or do they mean "never-printed negatives"? How would they know?

And the illustration above this text is a bunch of Kodak slide boxes, not negative envelopes. I never got negatives back in boxes like that. So I'm confused about what is what here.

Nonetheless, the photos are wonderful!

I'm assuming they meant never-printed negatives.

The trailer notes that many of them were in film cans, undeveloped.

Vivian Maier seems like an extraordinaire photographer. And John Maloof ("Maloof collection") seems like an extraordinaire douchebag.

Those were some incredible sample photos. It would be amazing to see a larger selection of them.

Interesting, but I wish the author would decide if the name is spelled Vivian or Vivien. I also wish the author had said why she was so important, as I know nothing about photography.

I find it to be important because it documents facets of the early 1950's and 1960's that we would have not otherwise seen.

It is a very good look back in time

Open each photo in it's own browser window and maximize it.

Now just stop, and look at it. Think about the person shown and what they might be thinking about this woman coming up to them with a camera.

She really had a talent. And the fact that she hid it, only to be discovered by chance after her death, makes it fascinating.

So she's capturing an interaction- thanks. That's the help I was looking for. I didn't know if it was some composition style, or focus effect, or anything else that knowledgeable people may look at and remark, "Wow! This changes things!"

> I didn't know if it was some composition style, or focus effect, or anything else

It's all of that and more. Her technique in exposure, action. composition is wonderful. However as I am browsing her portfolio I keep finding myself delighted in her ability to reveal hidden worlds in the mundane.

Take for example this child playing in the dirt. He's been caught in the act, of what is surely an innocuous game. But he is wearing a jumpsuit, a coonskin cap and has a pack of matches, it speaks of so much mischief. http://www.vivianmaier.com/portfolios/travels/?pid=122

Thanks for the link. Upvote and comment for visibility

The OP post/link wants to run scripts / load stuff from all over the place, which I wasn't gonna OK. This one ( vivianmaier.com ) is OK tho, and hosting some amazing photos.. She had an amazing eye.

Though mostly candid, the shots look almost like she spent hours posing the models, setting up the lighting and set, getting the wardrobe and hair just right...plus there's an interesting pattern to the shots, how everything is just at a certain, interesting, inquisitive height, just a hair below the normal person's eye level (explained by her selfie [1]) nevertheless it asks the viewer to take on the role of a child, maybe 10 to 12, in an adult's world, looking up at adults, and down at very young children...her photography is astonishing in it's ability to draw you into the moment with this queer subjects that she's managed to find

1 - http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/02/18/found-at-auction-th...

Have a look at http://www.flickr.com/groups/onthestreet/pool/ to get a feel for this style of photography and what good looks like.

I am also a street photographer, maybe you'll find some of my shots interesting :)

http://500px.com/kennethreitz

Street photography is diFficult because you have to capture a moment without interfering and you don't want to piss someone off for photographing them. Vivian seemed to have the knack for recognizing a great moment and something about her demeanor meant she was able to approach them very easily.

It's a bit of an exaggeration I think. Vivian Maier is tremendously talented to be sure, but "quite possibly the most important street photographer of the 20th century" is a preeeetty big leap. "Top street photographer of the 20th century" means you're going toe to toe with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Elliott Erwitt, Daido Moriyama, Bruce Gilden, and a slew of others.

What does separate her from your average Flickr user is her technique and her knack for catching the Decisive Moment.

Go back and look at some of the pictures in the article. Now imagine having taken that photo 0.2 seconds later, or earlier. How many of them would've been as good? How many would be completely different and completely mundane? Knowing, seeing, and capturing the Decisive Moment is very, very hard, especially in the 50s and 60s before the advent of autofocus, auto-winding, and auto-everything.

She's also compositionally very competent. This is something that's harder to appreciate unless you're into photography yourself and have seen a large amount of work. Unlike most amateur street photographers, her photos are frequently not about the subject, but rather interesting light, textures, and geometry, in addition to the subject matter.

This is a cool comment. Thanks for writing it. I wouldn't have looked as carefully at those photos if you hadn't written it.

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