After returning from a showing of some of Vivian Maier's work in Atlanta, I've been reflecting on what was her engine, her source of momentum. Maier never showed her work and had no known associates or colleagues in any social or artistic community.
But she did have a connection to her subjects. That is strikingly clear from a viewing of her images. Many of her pictures involve people, and most of those were unposed. They reveal a respect for their dignity, regardless of social standing. If any possess pretence or arrogance, those qualities inhering in the subjects are not superimposed by the photographer. And Maier takes the same approach to her own self-portraits. She discloses a personal dignity, self control, and presence in those photographs, even though many of them obscure some or all of herself in shadow or reflections. They portray a kind of stature and presence that is quite independent from her actual physical dimensionality.
Many of her images remained on unprocessed rolls of film. Only posthumously are they seeing the light of day. This means that Maier took countless images without ever personally viewing the results.
Those who now possess her work have been meticulously preparing it for publication and showing, one negative at a time. I am told that what is striking about her work is how few of her pictures are bad images. She possessed a refined and perfected craft with a heightened sense of timing and composition, and took a camera with her everywhere. The equipment seldom left her hands.
She possessed mastery of the craft, sensitivity and empathy for her subjects, and no desire for approval or critique of her images. External acknowledgement appeared to be irrelevant to her. And even the tangible results of her art - the image in print form - seemed to be a low priority to her. For her, the practice was primary, not the product.
I can imagine her walking with perfect posture, making brief eye contact with strangers, relaxed smile, Rolliflex always ready at her waist, open to and anticipating a fleeting moment of the right light, perfect composition, and convergence of textures and lines. She moved through space with the kind of gentle attentiveness masterful photographers and spiritual masters have in common.
I don't know if she actually did this, but I wouldn't be surprised if she continued to compose and "shoot" with her camera even after she ran out of film or money.
I suspect, for Maier, the camera was the portal through which she primarily engaged the world. I can't help but think that without the camera at her waist, her vision would have been diminished. Here practice as photographer was the way she saw, encountered and engaged. She seemed to have little curiosity, in her later years, about what the pictures looked like. The print was a byproduct, something left over after the process concluded, increasingly irrelevant as time passed. It was through the camera's viewfinder that she accessed her world, not through the printed image. I can only speculate. I might be entirely wrong about this. Maybe the reason so many rolls of film went undeveloped was purely financial.
But we can't dispute that Vivian Maier and her cameras were inseparable. Most of us also agree that she articulated the way she saw the world with a voice that was exquisitely gifted. How fortunate it is for all of us that she used real film in her cameras.
Read another related post about Vivian Maier on my general photography blog.
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