I feel like taking a break from writing about politics today, so I will briefly turn to another of my favorite topics, documentaries, two posts about which I have written in the past.
Like politics, documentaries at their best deal with nature - either the nature that we are part of, or human nature. Today's recommendation deals with the latter, exploring both the life and the work of amateur photographer Vivian Maier, whose prodigious output was discovered only after her death.
Although there remains much to be digitized, many of her pictures can be viewed here. In my mind, her eye is reminiscent of legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson's; both are able to capture those telling moments in life that say so much about us in often subtle, understated ways.
TVO recently showed the documentary Finding Vivian Maier. Here is its introduction:
This fascinating documentary shuttles from New York to France to Chicago as it traces the life story of the late Vivian Maier, a career nanny whose previously unknown cache of 100,000 photographs has earned her a posthumous reputation as one of America's most accomplished and insightful street photographers. When Vivian Maier died in 2009 at age eighty-three, she left behind more than 100,000 negatives of her street photography -images that she'd scarcely shared with anyone. She had spent most of her adult life as a nanny with no spouse, no children of her own and no close ties. Her photographs and belongings were hidden in storage, until the rent came overdue and the facility auctioned them off. They might have vanished into obscurity were it not for the intervention of John Maloof, a twenty six- year-old amateur historian in Chicago, who purchased a box of her unidentified photographs and became obsessed by what he discovered.
You can watch the film by clicking here. If your computer has an hdmi output, I would recommend watching it on your television.
Hi Lorne I watched last week Interesting character
ReplyDeleteHi Kev. She certainly was interesting. While the documentary never really finds an explanation for why she didn't seek a profile for her work, that work itself is quite a legacy. It is difficult in some ways to reconcile the sensitive eye she had with the negative aspects of her character, however.
DeleteWhat brilliant work. She opens such a window into my past. Streetscapes as I remember them from my childhood. Humanity before we became manicured, spit-polished and laminated. The artistry of her choice of subjects and the composure of her images is almost overwhelming. And to think she did it using basic, film-camera technology. Today's DSLRs handle aperature, shutter speed, white balance, focus, ISO - everything she had to do manually. Even the best of modern technology, however, can't replicate the power of her eye. Just brilliant.
ReplyDeleteYou have captured her essence here, Mound. I don't know if you are a fan of Ansel Adams, but the artistry you attribute to Maier can also be found in his work with nature, again having captured its majesty manually, using only the technology of his time.
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