K1 Kämp Galleria Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki
15 February -18 April 2021
Who is Vivian Maier? Born in 1926 as a French American, a full-time nanny and a street photographer: during her lifetime, Vivian Maier took more than 150,000 photos, primarily of the people and architecture in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, and travel photography in Beijing, Shanghai, Manila and Bangkok; whereas those photographs were unknown and unpublished, even many of her negatives were never printed. Moving back and forth between the United States and France, Vivian Maier settled down in Chicago’s North Shore area in 1956, where she worked primarily as a nanny for two families: the Gensburgs from 1956 to 1972, and the Raymonds from 1967 to 1973. As a real live Mary Poppins for over four decades, the Gensburg brothers, helped their dear nanny while Vivian Maier became destitute in old age, until she fell her head on the ice in January and shortly passed away on April 21, 2009.
In 2007, A Chicago photo collector and part-time historian, JOHN MALOOF, together with two other Chicago-based collectors, Ron Slattery and Randy Prow, acquired a large amount of Maier’s photos and 8mm films during an auction in North Side, Chicago. Maloof at first was unable to discover any information about Vivian Maier until a link of Maier’s death notice from Chicago Tribune in April 2009. In October 2009, Maloof shared selections of Maier’s photographs on Flickr; which soon became a viral phenomenon, with thousands of readers expressing their interests.
In early 2010, Chicago art collector Jeffrey Goldstein acquired a portion of the Maier collection from Prow, one of the original buyers, and in December 2014, sold his purchase to Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. John Maloof, who runs the Maloof Collection, now owns around 90% of Maier’s total output, including 100,000 to 150,000 negatives, more than 3,000 vintage prints, hundreds of rolls of film, home movies, audio tape interviews, and ephemera including cameras and paperwork. The motifs in Maier’s photographs include street life, portraits of anonymous and the children she knew. She also captured herself a lot in the frame: in various surroundings, either on a reflective surface, or as the photographer’s shadow. Maier herself in an inventive way performs as a pioneer selfie influencer before the rise of any social media; she surely is a secured Queen of Selfie.
Anne Morin, the curator of the exhibition, has curated several exhibitions with Vivian Maier’s photographs since 2010, from Oslo, London, Paris, Amsterdam, New York to São Paulo. From February 2021 the collection of photos are exhibited at K1 Finnish Museum of Photography, is the first round to focus on Maier’s self-portraits.
KI FINNISH MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY divides the short films, the street portraits in New York and Chicago, the self-portraits and the period of colour in order to outstand the distinguished themes of the worlds of Vivian Maier. Her best-known photographs depict street scenes in Chicago and New York during the 1950s and 1960s: Elderly folk congregating in Chicago’s Old Polish Downtown, garishly dressed dowagers, and the urban African-American riding on a black stallion in downtown NYC. Under Maier’s Rolleiflex lens, her photography suffused with the kind of human understanding, warmth and playfulness, those who aware of or none, were simply natural and not a touch of pretentiousness.
Journalist William Meyers in the writing for The Wall Street Journal, notes that due to Maier used a medium-format Rolleiflex, rather than a 35mm camera, her pictures contain more details. As phenomenal as those legendary street photographers, such as Harry Callahan, WEEGEE or ROBERT FRANK , the most interesting and truly intriguing about Vivian Maier, is that her high numbers of self-portraits among those negatives: “in many ingenious permutations, as if she were checking on her own identity or interpolating herself into the environment. A shadowy character, she often photographed her own shadow, possibly as a way of being there and simultaneously not quite there”(Meyers, 1).
From Finnish Museum of Photography’s Self-Portrait Wall, Maier herself occasionally stood in front of the store windows, eyes upon atop, a fitted dress with a rather stern shape of lips; or multiple desk mirrors reflected photographer’s fuzzy shadowy silhouette, grey and slim; one of my favourite self-double is Maier her own profile, guarding as if her caring children on-going mischievous behaviours, while the round mirror showcases a Dutch Protestant’s headdress, makes Vivian Maier a Holly Hunter Doppelgängerin, from Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993).
The location of K1 Finnish Museum of Photography is genuinely convenient for those who live the regions of Helsinki, for Vivian Maier exhibition I paid an early visit on the premiere day, before the third wave of lockdown on March 8th; however the lack of discovery information, detailed descriptions alongside with each photography remain still the repentance, even though the Google search is never challenging nowadays. The rise of a newfound photographer relies not only on Maier’s persistence or collection, but also the efforts of historians and curators. For more information about Vivian Maier, Vivian Maier: Street Photographer (2) or Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits (3), both edited by the original collector John Maloof, are recommended to read. As for motion pictures, in 2013, documentary Finding Vivian Maier was written, directed and produced by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel, which won at Miami International Film Festival, later in 2015 it was nominated at the 87th Academy Awards for the Best Documentary Feature. I encourage K1 curators to provide visitors more of further reach about the presenting photographers, at the reopening of Finnish Museum of Photography.
Who is VIVIAN MAIER? Through the reflections the nanny finds herself, via the negatives we finally find her.
Works Cited:
1. Meyers, William. “The Nanny’s Secret”. wsj.com. July 2, 2014.
2. Maloof, John, ed. Vivian Maier: Street Photographer. Brooklyn, NY: Power House, 2011. ISBN 978-1-57687-577-3
3. Maloof, John, ed. Vivian Maier: Self-Portrait. Brooklyn, NY: Power House, 2013. ISBN978-1-57687-662-6.
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier
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