When photographer Vivian Maier passed away April 2009, she left behind more than 140.000 images, many of which had not been developed. As soon as Vivians work was shared on the internet, both her work and her story drew lots of attention.
This books gives both her story and presents a lot of her work. As interesting as her story is, I enjoy her work the most. For that reason I was happy to find that 200 of the 250 pages in this book is dedicated to presenting her work.
Of course I was aware that Vivians work would centre around street photography, but I has impressed with other sides of her work showing architecture, landscapes, self portraits, still life and even some surrealistic work reminding me of work done by Henrik Cartier-Bresson.
I am not aware of how large a share of her total body of work has been developed and used for this book, but even so I find Vivian to be a very complete photographer that uses composition, reflections, framing, etc in an effortless way that you – if you are into photography – can only admire. And in addition the street images portrait people in a way where the portraits are almost loving in the tender way they capture people sleeping, reading newspapers or just passing by.
So as you can probably guess, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book if you are into photography and want to study and seek inspiration from the work of one of the best photographers of all time. It really is a pleasure to study Vivians work.
Related reading
Review: Henri Cartier-Bresson Here and Now, by Clément Chéroux
Shopping link
Affiliate link to the book on Amazon.
