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Post by htmb on Aug 1, 2014 12:58:37 GMT
It certainly gave me a lot to think about in terms of street photography and made me think of Bixa's recent comment about going to take a photo and having a good shot evolve into a "pose" as the subjects shifted. That often happens to me, as well as the frozen, "deer caught in the headlights" looks as people realize you're focusing your camera on them.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 21, 2014 18:44:52 GMT
Just came across this Flickr group by accident & have to say it provoked a bit of an eye roll. That's because the pictures in the pool are simply street photography, good, bad & indifferent. Paraphrasing Htmb above, I'd say there is a great deal to think aboout in street photography, including learning from the work of others. But ths Flickr group as set forth seems more about limiting than learniing. I dunno – am I looking at this the wrong way? www.flickr.com/groups/vivian_maiers_style/
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Post by htmb on Aug 21, 2014 22:16:21 GMT
Just at first glance, some of the photos I saw on that site appeal to me, while others not so much. We have a lot of super photos here at AnyPort, too, including some fantastic black and whites. I think the idea of forming a "Vivian Maiers style" site using poor punctuation, plus the seemingly lack of knowledge about the different types of photography, including color, that VM employed bother me more than anything, but I'm just being picky.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 22, 2014 4:24:50 GMT
I don't think you're being picky at all. Discerning, yes. Picky, no.
The grammar doesn't bother me so much since many people on Flickr are not native English speakers. But I totally agree with your other comments.
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Post by htmb on Aug 22, 2014 4:27:06 GMT
Good point and something I had not considered from my lofty perch.
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Post by bjd on Aug 22, 2014 5:43:44 GMT
Frankly, I don't think much of those photos at all. I got the impression that whoever contributes to the page thought, "Oh, I'll just make it in black and white and it's will be as good as Maier's." But no, a lot of the pictures have no focal point, they need some cropping -- just cutting somebody off in the middle is not cool, it's bad framing.
The difference between that site and Vivian Maier's is that a lot of her pictures were good, and in many of her's, the subject was looking at the camera.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 7, 2014 1:19:00 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2014 4:32:37 GMT
The article tends to make me wonder about the fairness of inheritance laws in the meantime. While I'm sure that all of us would like to suddenly be informed that we are to receive a sudden and unexpected fortune, it is far from certain that we would really deserve it. The French have a term for this fantasy: "mon oncle d'Amérique" whereby the long lost uncle that nobody ever heard of and who struck it rich in the Americas leaves his entire fortune to a distant relative back home. As you know, all over the world there are thousands of shady lawyers who make a living poring over the details of abandoned bank accounts or property titles and extracting fees from people who have a 0.01% chance of being an heir.
While Maloof's actions might have been a bit questionable, the thing that is certain is that he is the person who saved these photos from the municipal dump when nobody was interested in them.
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Post by bixaorellana on Sept 7, 2014 5:07:36 GMT
A good point. Also, we don't really know for sure that he did anything shady. Still, if it is the case that he knew who the author of the photos was & deliberately waited for her death to publicly claim them, his ethics are pretty shoddy, even if possession is 9/10s of the law.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2014 5:45:50 GMT
"Deliberately waited for her death" is the spin that certain people have put on it. It is more likely that Maloof basically just checked to see if she was still alive and found out that she was penniless and "crazy" (since she was eccentric in younger years, it can be assumed that she did not improve in her final years). He obviously knew that he did not have artistic rights over her work while she was still alive but in view of the mass of photographs to be verified and developed, I frankly don't think that was his primary concern for those two years, unless people are ready to accuse him of pushing her on the ice to cause the accident that ultimately killed her. She easily could have lived another 10 years, so I very much doubt that he had a stopwatch to see how fast he could start selling the photos.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 1, 2017 15:38:48 GMT
There is a new biography out about Maier. Full article from the NYTimes here: www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/books/review-vivian-maier-biography-pamela-bannos.html... Almost immediately upon discovery of her work, she was heralded as one of the 20th century’s great photographers. The Maier myth followed. She became the “nanny photographer,” the secretive self-taught genius who tramped around town with a Rolleiflex camera around her neck and her young charges in tow. The eBay enthusiasts who snatched up her negatives at auction with the hopes of reselling them became heroes for saving her from obscurity. One, a real estate agent named John Maloof, bought the bulk of her estate for $400 and made it his mission to share her work with the world. He has published books of her photographs, arranged exhibitions, and co-written and codirected a documentary, “Finding Vivian Maier” (2013), that was nominated for an Academy Award. But stories — like snapshots — are shaped by people, and for particular purposes. There’s always an angle. A new biography, “Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife,” by Pamela Bannos, strives to rescue Maier all over again, this time from the men who promulgated the Maier myth and profited off her work; chiefly Maloof, who controlled her copyright for a time. After a legal battle — “the Vivian Mire,” one critic called it — her estate passed into a trust last year, where it will be held for possible heirs and eventually released into the public domain. ...
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 31, 2018 17:48:16 GMT
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Post by bjd on Apr 1, 2018 5:17:45 GMT
Wow, obviously a professional photographer with a great eye for street scenes and kids.
We also see how very much Barcelona has changed since the overwhelming religious influence during Franco's regime, since religious processions are a big subject here.
Adding that I read the links after looking at the photographs in the 3rd link first. So not a professional, but perhaps in another situation Ms Milagros would have been better known.
Many years ago in a charity shop we found boxes of old glass photographic plates. At the time I was learning how to develop photos so printed them off. They were mostly pre-WW1 of an obviously well-to-do family in France: nannies pushing baby carriages, army officers in uniform in the gardens of nice houses, women skiing in long dresses!, children in the garden... Not interesting for the quality of the photos, just for the very fact that they existed.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 1, 2018 5:25:17 GMT
I am fascinated by the detective work required to identify the photographer. It also takes an amazing leap of faith to just buy negatives.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2018 15:25:41 GMT
Fabulous!!!!
Thanks for this Bixa!
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 22, 2021 15:06:57 GMT
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