Who today doesn't know Vivian Maier? If she was rediscovered by budding collector John Maloof whose sensational documentary revealed her to the general public, the American “nanny photographer” had not yet entered the Photo Poche pantheon. This is done with the publication of number 179 of this collection published by Actes Sud.
In the introduction, photography historian Anne Morin tells us the story of this woman born in New York in 1926 to a French mother and a father of Austro-Hungarian origin. She became interested in photography at a very young age, which she learned as a self-taught photographer with her Kodak Brownie. A governess for children by day, she demonstrates her photographer's eye during her free time but also “on-the-job”.
The street is her terrain, she photographs every moment, every detail: “it is the era of the American dream, of hegemony and excessively overexposed modernity, the other side of which will constitute the very essence of Vivian Maier's work. She paints a portrait through photography and cinema, creating a visual language at the crossroads of humanist photography and American street photography. » (Anne Morin) The photographer spends time in working-class neighborhoods, transforming the anecdotes she observes into moments of History.
Another favorite subject, childhood. Childhood constituted her daily life during the forty years of her life as a governess. She finds there this taste for play which she puts into practice in her photography, whether when she looks for the funny in a subject or when she experiments with her visual language. Play is also at the heart of her self-portraits, in which the photographer likes to show a fleeting presence which can be guessed on somewhat distorting mirrors or only appears in the form of a shadow superimposed on diverse and varied settings. .
This silhouette now has a name: Vivian Maier. The photographer has indeed emerged from the shadows. Many of his photos are today icons of photography alongside those who became his peers: Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Robert Doisneau, Helen Levitt…
Photo Pouch – Vivian Maier
October, 2024
12.50 x 19.00 cm
144 pages
ISBN : 978-2-330-19665-3
14.50€
Available online and in all good bookstores
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