Closed
31.7 – 14.9 2019
Vivian Maier:Colour Photographs
3–5 Swallow St
Vivian Maier:Colour Photographs
31.07 – 14.09.2019
Closed
Hours
Monday to Saturday
10:00 am – 5:30 pm
Gallery
3–5 Swallow St
London
W1B 4DE
Self-Portrait, Chicagoland, October 1975. Chromogenic print, from an edition of 15
Untitled, c. 1977. Chromogenic print, from an edition of 15
An exhibition of lesser-known colour works by Vivian Maier (1926 -2009), many on display in the UK for the first time, at Huxley-Parlour Gallery.
Vivian Maier was a professional nanny who worked for more than 40 years for families on Chicago’s North Shore. In her spare time she would wander the streets of Chicago and New York, photographing fragments of everyday urban life, with spontaneity, empathy and insight. Although unknown in her lifetime, her photographic corpus was discovered in 2007, consisting of more than 100,000 negatives.
Untitled, c. 1977. Chromogenic print, from an edition of 15
Dating from 1960 to 1984, the works in the exhibition depict street scenes of Chicago and New York, as well as including a number of her enigmatic, staged self-portraits. Maier’s colour work was made during the last 30 years of her life when she began to work with a 35-millimetre camera. During this time she produced roughly 40,000 Ektachrome colour slides. Her colour work became increasingly more abstract than her earlier black and white photography, as she focused her lens on texture and pattern as well as on found objects, newspapers and graffiti. The photographs on display not only demonstrate Maier’s eye for composition, but also reveal her understanding of the subtleties of colour harmony within a frame.
The Exhibition
5
The Works
15
Vivian Maier
Untitled, c. 1977
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Miami, 1960
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Randolph Street, Chicago, 1977
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Chicago, October 1979
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Chicago, 1977
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Chicago, February 1976
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Chicago, 1984
C-type print
Vivian Maier
North Shore Chicago, July 1967
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Chicago, 1962
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Chicago, April 1977
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Self-Portrait, 1961
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Self-Portrait, Chicago, October 1977
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Self-Portrait, Chicagoland, October 1975
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Self-Portrait, Chicago, June 1976
C-type print
Vivian Maier
Self-Portrait, Chicago Area, June 1978
C-type print
Maier was an early poet of colour photography. You can see in her photographs that she was a quick study of human behaviour, of the unfolding moment, the flash of a gesture, or the mood of a facial expression – brief events that turned the quotidian life of the street into a revelation for her.
Joel Meyerowitz
B. United States1926-2009
Biography
Vivian Maier worked as a nanny and pursued photography in her spare time, focusing on the streets of central Chicago and New York as her subject. Maier would use her Rolleiflex twin lens camera to capture the lives of people – portraits of distinctive individuals, urban structures, children at play were her most consistent subjects. Her photographs were taken using a concealed lens to give her work its untempered character. Maier was prolific, frequently using a roll of film a day, though she remained secretive about her work, rarely showing it to anyone. Maier amassed a significant archive of street photography, while also turning the camera on herself to create self-portraits that play with the nature of photographic representation. Her work records the shifting climate of 1950s and 1960s America.
Maier stored her growing number of photographic negatives in storage containers as her reclusive behaviour escalated and she faced increasing financial difficulties. Whilst hospitalised, the contents of her storage containers were sold to clear debts. These were purchased by a Chicago-based auctioneer who put the containers into auction, a large number of which were purchased by John Maloof, founder of the Vivian Maier archive.
Maier’s story and her work have been the subject of numerous publications and exhibitions and a documentary, Finding Vivian Maier was made in 2013.
Maier died in New York in 2009.