Vivian Maier Mysteries

The Westport Arts Center in Westport, Connecticut presents an amazing collection of Vivian Maier photographs. The exhibition features over seventy color and black & white stunning photos taken by the very secretive photographer during her lifetime.

“Well, I suppose nothing is meant to last forever. We have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel. You get on, you have to go to the end. And then somebody has the same opportunity to go to the end and so on.”
– Vivian Maier

Her work will last forever. Vivian Maier’s unbelievable story has been pieced together by the images she made and the few artifacts she left. Only a handful of facts have surfaced about her life. The documentary, Finding Vivian Maier, was a masterpiece in itself but to gaze at these images is the real thrill. John Maloof the documentarian who discovered her work in a storage locker brought her to life and to worldwide acclaim as an accomplished artist with a stunning body of work. She shot more than 100,000 images over decades as she served as a Nanny in the Chicago and New York areas.

She was so interested in the people around her and shot her images largely unposed. She explored all aspects of the cities near where she lived. We see the well to do and the poor all in urban landscapes. It was just incredible to see the color photographs and the color compositions she made in the curation. It’s almost as if you can’t see enough of her work, you want even more than this extensive show offers and you can feel that she could never get enough either. She never put that camera down. What drove her into an escapist life? What energy made her shoot and shoot and shoot these images? What were the demons from her past that fired her creativity? The mysteries remain, but this time you can feel really close to her and certainly you walk away knowing what was important to her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Estate of Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York.