With that out of the way, last Sunday I went by the Photo Center NW to see what was on display (I recommend it, I always find it interesting). They had a show of photographs by a person called Vivian Maier. The pictures are very professionally printed and mounted, and are offered for $1,800 a piece (!). Most left me cool, but a few are very good:
Then there is the back story. In short, we are told Ms. Maier took some 100,000 photographs, left most of them undeveloped, got old, and died. At this point, according to Wikipedia, a guy by the name of John Maloof comes into the story. He is described as the curator of Ms. Maier collection. All of a sudden, there are NPR stories, and publications, and exibitions. He is not mentioned at PCNW at all, and his relation ot Ms. Maier is unknown.
Maybe I am just a grumpy old man, but my guess is that he came by the negatives in a yard sale and saw an opportunity to make a buck by telling a story people like to hear: ignored artist recognized as genius. A few thoughts:
- This happens all of the time: see Charles Jones, whose life is here, and a few photos can be seen here. There seems to be a cottage industry of people scouring yard sales and flea market in search of the next ignored genius.
- One hundred thousand pictures! Of course there were a few good ones! We are in Infinite Monkeys territory here (if you have enough monkeys hitting typewriters long enough, eventually one will produce the works of Shakespeare). I have taken nowhere near 100,000 pictures, have the photographic talent of a gerbil, and I sure enough already have a few good ones stashed away!
- Ms. Maier, I am afraid, was not an artist. By my personal definition of art, there has to be a process of doing, looking at the result, and either improving on it or keeping what is already good. The good pictures we see in the show are the combination of a lucky accident, plus a good darkroom printer, and a smart impresario to suggest a story that did not really take place.
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