Vivian Maier: Super-nanny street photographer?

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icarusinbound
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Vivian Maier: Super-nanny street photographer?

Unread post by icarusinbound »

I am intrigued and massively-skeptical about this supposed collection. The imagery is so...captivating, well-composed, lit- look at it, and you'll see, it's just too....everything. Some web references mention there being hundreds of thousands of pictures in the collection.

I'm totally unsure what's going on here. But it's worth some discussion and dissection. Is anyone else familiar with this mysterious story?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0366jd5 wrote:The incredible story of a mysterious nanny who died in 2009 leaving behind a secret hoard - thousands of stunning photographs. Never seen in her lifetime, they were found by chance in a Chicago storage locker and auctioned off cheaply.

Now Vivian Maier has gone viral and her magical pictures sell for thousands of dollars. Vivian was a tough street photographer, a secret poet of suburbia. In life she was a recluse, a hoarder, spinning tall tales about her French roots. Presented by Alan Yentob, the film includes stories from those who knew her and those who revealed her astonishing work
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0366jd5

See http://www.vivianmaier.com, paying particular attention to the self-portrait section...

Image
http://www.vivianmaier.com/media/galler ... s/1075.jpg
http://www.fotoforensics.com/analysis.p ... 257.127876

Image
http://www.vivianmaier.com/media/galler ... b_1955.jpg

Here is one minor disinfo forum venture into the possibilities of hoax, and the 'Maier' phenomenon (see http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/0 ... -old/?_r=0 (obviously a trivially-simplistic solution)
So did conspiracy theories. “Could this be a hoax?” wondered a commenter under the name Film Noir Anti-Hero. Another, known simply as Greg, replied: “The idea being that somebody has been running around taking a lot of photos of people dressed up as if they were living in the ’40s with a T.L.R. in order to publish them on the Web and giving all the credit to someone who has recently died?”
There is something very odd going on here, I feel. Opinions / comments are most welcome, including perhaps "hey, don't be so paranoid, she was simply a totally-unknown visionary artist that was ahead of her time"
brianv
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Re: Vivian Maier: Super-nanny street photographer?

Unread post by brianv »

Farcevalue
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Re: Vivian Maier: Super-nanny street photographer?

Unread post by Farcevalue »

Now I have to determine whether I was infected with some NWO, Illuminati shillery while I was enjoying Wallace and Gromit. Dang.
brianv
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Re: Vivian Maier: Super-nanny street photographer?

Unread post by brianv »

Farcevalue wrote:Now I have to determine whether I was infected with some NWO, Illuminati shillery while I was enjoying Wallace and Gromit. Dang.
I have the whole collection - for my son of course :P

That yentob is a creepy fucker!
lux
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Re: Vivian Maier: Super-nanny street photographer?

Unread post by lux »

I was booted off a major film-photography forum a few years ago for expressing some mild skepticism about this Maier find. I don't deny that the photos are excellent however.

The guy who supposedly discovered these photos and published a book about them is John Maloof. His first known book credit is a get-rich-quick scheme called The Real Estate Agent's Guide to FSBOs: Make Big Money Prospecting For Sale By Owner Properties
http://tinyurl.com/laay4su

But if you go to Amazon's John Maloof page the book is not listed there.

After his real estate book, while researching his next book (a collection of early photos of Chicago), he says, he bought the Maier photos sight unseen in an auction while looking for general street scenes to use in the book. He then says …

“I ... looked through the images with my co-author, finding none suitable for our book, so I stashed them in the closet. It wasn’t until I was finished with the book that the images were looked at again and it took about a half year or more for me to realize that these were really good photographs and not just some old found snapshots.”

I don't know what to make of all this or what the motive for fakery might be but, to me, something is not right.
Fake Eater
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Re: Vivian Maier: Super-nanny street photographer?

Unread post by Fake Eater »

You are right, something is up there alright.
Image
Is depth of field in a mirror like that?
TheRideNeverEnds
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Re: Vivian Maier: Super-nanny street photographer?

Unread post by TheRideNeverEnds »

Farcevalue » August 4th, 2013, 2:13 pm wrote:Now I have to determine whether I was infected with some NWO, Illuminati shillery while I was enjoying Wallace and Gromit. Dang.
It's cool that you mention this. Yesterday I had a short discussion in a bar about whether or not the Apollo missions were faked. I showed the people I was with a picture of the landing module, then joked that I'd feel safer flying in a recreation of Wallace and Gromit's rocket than in that shaky apollo thing.
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