Nanny Photog

Over vaygay, I was watching all these weird, random videos and happened upon a super inspiration story about Vivian Maier (1926-2009). She was a North Shore nanny who explored photography on her days off. Her sophisticated, but untrained eye captured well over 100,000 images but what is most interesting to me is Vivian's lack of desire to share her creativity. She was happy to explore Chicagoland and humankind through the medium of photograhy, without broadcasting the information. Vivian had expressed no interest of sharing her work, even though I think it's something worth sharing. I guess I am most surprised/inspired by her modesty.

Anyway, I went to the Cultural Center here in Chicago (which is beautiful in it's own right, it's the old Chicago Library, has beautiful mosaic tilings, and huge Tiffany domed ballrooms.) Although the exhibition was a little caca/ghetto, her work is wonderful and here are some of my favorite images.

self portrait.

♥. the actual image is intentionally blurry and reminds me of Gerhard Richter's "Woman Descending the Staircase." (one of my fav paintings at the Modern Wing of the Art Institute in Chicago)

i kept staring at this photo, because the children seemed like caricatures of street urchins instead of real kids. the one of the right even has mismatched buttons on his home sewn overalls. 

 chic, non?

source: wimp, cultural center exhibition "Finding Vivian Maier: Street Photographer"