“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” - RuPaul - - - - - - - - - - - “if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.” - John F. Kennedy - - - - - - - - - - - - “Imagine finding someone you love more than anything in the world, who you would risk your life for but couldn’t marry. And you couldn’t have that special day the way your friends do – you know, wear the ring on your finger and have it mean the same thing as everybody else. Just put yourself in that person’s shoes. It makes me feel sick to my stomach …. When I shared a picture of my tattoo on my Twitter page and said, ‘ALL LOVE is equal,’ a lot of people mocked me – they said, ‘What happened to you? You used to be a Christian girl!’ And I said, ‘Well, if you were a true Christian, you would have your facts straight. Christianity is about love.’ The debate resulted in a lot of threats and hate mail to people who agreed and disagreed with me. At one point I had to say, ‘Dude, everyone lay off.’ Can’t people have friendly debates about sensitive topics without it turning into unnecessary threats?” - Pop star Miley Cyrus on her marriage equality tattoo - - - - - - - - - - -
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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Land of the Lost: The Street Photographer Who Almost Vanished

I wanted to blog about this story for a while, but didn't have the chance to until now.  The story is about an unknown street photographer, Vivian Maier; I was drawn to it while watching a television segment one night.

In the video below you will find out about John Maloof, who discovered her work and is using most of his time making sure this amazing photographer is recognized and put alongside one of the greats.  Tripwire magazine just posted an article on the 35 Great Photographer's Portfolio Sites to Inspire You, but these photographs by Vivian are more than that.  They are period time pieces; like moments frozen in time.  As I look through these images it makes me wish I had a time machine, or I simply a wormhole or some type of anomaly, like in Star Trek.

What makes Vivian's story so unique, is that she was just a simple Nanny; who during her breaks was able to find the time to walk the streets of Chicago, taking photographs. According to John she was a very private woman, which is something he discovered when he found her photographs.  He bought a storage locker at a Chicago auction house, and when he opened it found thousands of negatives that obviously Ms. Maier had never seen herself.  He is in the process of developing these rolls and has already opened a show which was years in the making.

John mentions on his blog that out of the 100,000 negatives he has in his collection, 20-30,000 of them were still in rolls, undeveloped from the 1960s - 1970s.  After reading a New York Times article, I learned a little more about this private woman.  She was born in New York in1926, lived in France and returned to New York in 1951. Five years later she moved to Chicago, where she worked for 40 years as a Nanny.

I look forward to keeping track of John's blog and up to date with news articles to discover more from this amazing photographer.  For the mean time, enjoy this wonderful video.

1 comment:

Ryan said...

Beautiful photos. Now let's watch Mad Men my love. I'm suddenly in the mood.

I have organized my blogs with 3 days worth of postings, so if you wish to continue reading the days before that, and so forth and so forth, you can click the "Older Posts" button /\ /\ /\ right /\ up there.

There are 3 other ways you can find interesting topics to read as well.

*Clicking on any of the links under my "Favorite Categories" section on the left hand side of your screen

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Hope you enjoy my daily posts, and hope to hear from you soon.

- Blade 7184 aka Peter