Review: Vivian Maier @ Photofusion

In general I don’t like street photography, but there are a handful of photographers that make me re-evaluate this view whenever I encounter their work. Amongst them is Vivian Maier, who’s photographs has recently sprung into the public eye from the total obscurity it had languished in since she began shooting in New York in the 1950’s. Having burnt through thousands of rolls in her spare time while working as a nanny, Maier hid her negatives and prints away only for them to be ‘discovered’ after her death in 2009 by a Chicago estate agent looking for photographs to illustrate a local history book.

What he found must have been initially disappointing as they were predominantly New York street scenes, but evidently he soon realised these were no ordinary photographs. Indeed Maier’s work is now coming to be seen as one of the most significant photographic finds of the century. It’s not simply the subject matter, or the quantity (at least 100,000 negatives) but the remarkably developed visual style, and the consistent quality of Maier’s work that makes it something to behold, and a record of 1950’s urban America comparable in my minds to the photographs Paul Strand was taking several decades earlier.

Maier roamed the streets of New York shooting anything that caught her eye, from arrangements of objects on the street, to police officers detaining suspects, from the city’s beggars and homeless to members of its high society. She documented the mundane and the surreal, the funny and the sad. Her work is testament to the fact that part of being a good photographer is simply spending time out shooting and looking for these brief encounters that often make iconic images, and Maier seems to have encountered and captured more of these moments than most.

But her work isn’t just a consequence of commitment to tramping the streets with a camera in hand, her style is strikingly consistent. Part of this stems from her choice of camera, primarily a Rolleiflex TLR producing distinctive square, high quality medium format negatives. Not a particularly conventional choice for a street photographer, but a remarkable one in her hands producing beautiful photographs that belie their snapshot origins. Besides that her composition is so frequently spot on, her use of diagonals, low and high angles, and reflections all hinting perhaps at her European roots and influences.

On top of this Maier seems to have uncanny knack for zeroing in on photogenic subjects, while avoiding seeming predatory in the way so much street photography does. This is the main thing that salvages her photographs for me. When she photographs a strange character on the street it doesn’t feel on the one hand exploitative or condescending or on the other patronising or idealised. Maier’s photographs feel distant, even when they’re clearly taken right in a subject’s face. They’re the type of photographs that almost make you forget a photographer was involved in the process, a rare thing.

The only weakness I find with her work is I want to know more about the subjects, a problem shared by much street photography but which is exacerbated by the fact we know so little even about the photographer herself. This leads on to another issue. I’m slightly surprised that there hasn’t been more debate about the question of whether her work should be promoted and displayed in the way it has. We know next to nothing about Maier, why she took these photographs or what she wanted done with them. There seems to be slightly depressing business cult developing around her work, with prints of her negatives on sale for thousands of pounds. It’s hard to imagine what this eccentric and obviously very private French-American nanny would have made of it all.

Vivian Maier’s work is on at Photofusion in Brixton until 16^th September 2011.