Yet, We Still Finding Vivian Maier
And please don't believe everything Fotografiska write on Unseen Vivian Maier's wall text
After the documentary ‘Finding Vivian Maier’ came out in 2014, Vivian Maier rose to her posthumous fame with the mythology of ‘forbidden and forgotten master photographer hiding in plain sight as a nanny’. I still remember watching it 10 years ago and thinking “If the documentary has to remind us every 5 minutes that she was a nanny and how puzzling her life was. Was her photographs nanny-good or photographer-good?” I don’t even have a problem with her work. I have a problem with her legacy’s selling point. At the same time, the contemporary professional women photographers as hers or even before hers paved the path and contributed to the photography industry. I was manifesting that in the 2020s we should be enough with the ‘tortured artist’ myth and yet, with the last exhibitions before Fotografiska close for moving location, we still finding Vivian Maier.
The exhibition, Unseen Vivian Maier, holds 2 floors of the museum. The curating categorizes Maier’s works into the repetitive theme in her archives exaggerating how her street photography is capturing ordinary people not like others (really? no). On one hand, that’s very common for any photographer to have a recurring theme they are interested in, subject matter-wise, but in this case, this curation choice also portrays what people know of her, a reputation of being an obsessive odd photographer. We can see how her eyes voyeur for human’s gesture and personality. Her occasional framing of using foreground and a frame within a frame on window, glass, and mirror, also added to how voyeuristic those photographs feel.
Most of the Unseen Vivian Maier exhibition is what we already have seen thought out her 10 years of stardom. The lesser known they coined as ‘unseen’ may refer to her contact sheet, photos of kids she taking care of, her color photographs, and super8 films. The contact sheets are always good to see as we can understand more how photographers work, and the kid's photos are interesting in dynamic. But the color photographs and her films are generic and do not show any of her strength nor add further understanding to her existing works.
The exhibition lacks the context of the photography environment at the time because if so, Maier’s works are relatively considered NOT groundbreaking. That time was golden years for street photography; how Garry Winogrand explored people’s behavior on the street, how Imogen Cunningham took self-portraits both inside and outside studio space for almost 60 years of her career life, how Lee Friedlander constantly evolved frame within frame framing, how Helen Levitt captured vitality of kids’ life, how Robert Frank showed many aspects of American life, how Weegee rocked crime scenes, how Gordon Parks fought racial justice, or how Diane Arbus exposed the normality of grotesqueness. Maier is not a derivative of any photographer, but her body of works seem like a little bit of this and that from those photographers. It’s so tone-deaf to lack awareness of these professional photographers who actually change how we make and how we see photographs, and inspire thousands of amateur photographs to shoot like that, likely including Maier.
Without question, it does not even ring true what a wall text claimed Maier as ‘one of the greatest photographers in 20th century’. Fotografiska’s texts are overpraised and overclaimed in the level that can be unhealthy to visitors’ understanding of photography history. Good amateur street photographer? Yes. ‘belongs alongside some of the greatest names in photographic history, such as Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.’? You’re talking nonsense.
What Unseen Vivian Maier exhibition does is secure Maier’s myth. They feed visitors what Maier’s constructed man-made ‘brand’ selling, What popularity mainstream want to see or hear. But no substance. It’s like ‘based on true story’ history Hollywood movie that you shouldn’t expect actual truth from and will make you fail history class if you rely only on them. An execution is entertaining, but it’s commercial at best, as well as her legacy.