PHOTO:Vivian Maier-Works in Color

The genre of American street photography is dominated by photographers like Robert Frank, Joel Meyerowitz and Lee Friedlander. As a relative and as a woman, Vivian Maier’s observational approach forms an important complement to the photographic canon. Vivian Maier worked as a professional nanny throughout her life. In her free time, she documented life in large American cities such as New York and Chicago, although no one in her immediate circle ever saw the results.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Foam Archive

Following the successful exhibition “Vivian Maier – Street Photographer” (7/11/14-1/2/15) Foam presents the exhibition “Vivian Maier – Works in Color”. Vivian Maier worked as a children’s nanny but took photographs all her life, without anyone in her vicinity ever seeing the results. Her work was only discovered after her death, when a box containing negatives was offered to a local auctioneering house and immediately went on to become a worldwide sensation. Maier’s astonishing oeuvre is easily on a par with famous contemporaries. Vivian Maier’s fame is mainly based on her black & white photography. This exhibition will concentrate on a lesser known part of her oeuvre: some 60 color photographs made between 1956 and 1986. Maier mostly focused on portraying everyday life. Many photographs show the streets of Chicago (the city where Maier spent a large part of her life) with its people, objects, billboards and shops display windows. Her work in color seems a bit more playful than her black & white photographs. She also used a different camera for her color photography, a Leica instead of a Rolleiflex. Vivian Maier was born in the US as the daughter of a French mother and Austrian father. Her parents disappeared from her life relatively early, forcing her to become independent quickly. She started working as a nanny in 1951 and continued to do so for the rest of her life. Her photographic work reveals an interest in social subjects, depicting street life, the lower classes and immigrants.  As she began to experiment with color film, her work gradually took on a more abstract character. After Maier moved in with a wealthy Chicago family in 1956, she was given her own bathroom which became her first darkroom. After the children grew up in the 1970s, Maier was forced to seek work with other families. As a result, she was no longer able to develop and print her film material, and her film rolls started to pile up. Financial concerns and the absence of a permanent address eventually forced Maier to put aside her cameras and to place her belongings in storage while she tried to keep her head above water. In 2007, two years before she died, Maier failed to keep up payments on storage space she had rented on Chicago’s North Side. As a result, her negatives, prints, audio recordings, and 8mm film were auctioned. Three photo collectors bought parts of her work: John Maloof, Ron Slattery and Randy Prow. Maloof had bought the largest part of Maier’s work, about 30,000 negatives, because he was working on a book about the history of the Chicago neighborhood of Portage Park, Maloof later bought more of Maier’s photographs from another buyer at the same auction. Maloof discovered Maier’s name in his boxes but was unable to discover anything about her until a Google search led him to Maier’s death notice in the Chicago Tribune in April 2009.

Info: Foam, Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam, Duration 1/6-13/9/20, Days & Hours: Sun-Wed: 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri: 10:00-21:00, www.foam.org

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