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Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. Vivian Maier has a story that will forever be told as miraculous discovery. Born in New York in 1924, she became a nanny who carried her camera everywhere and took pictures of almost everything. When she died in 2009, hundreds of thousands of negatives were sitting in a storage unit. They were auctioned off to a man who took a look and realized he had the work of an artist in his hands. For the last decade, her story has been told in an Oscar-nominated documentary, several biographies, and gallery shows. And now, for the first time, there's an exhibition that captures the breadth of her work. It's called Vivian Maier: Unseen Work, and it takes up two floors at Fotografiska on Park Avenue South and 22nd. There are 230 images, Super-8 films, and even the cameras she used. It's also the final exhibition for this version of Fotografiska, which is announced it's leaving that location. Joining us now is Anne Morin, curator and director of diChroma photography. Anne, welcome.

Anne Morin: Hello. Good morning.

Alison Stewart: And Sophie Wright, executive director of Fotografiska. Hi, Sophie.

Sophie Wright: Hello there.

Alison Stewart: Hello. And listeners, head to our Instagram @AllofItWNYC, so you can see some of the images that we'll be talking about that Vivian Maier took. Vivian Maier, you've seen the stories, nanny with a camera. I think one said, Mary Poppins will take your picture. We've read a lot about her, but what do you hope this exhibition answers about Vivian Maier?

Anne Morin: It's the first exhibition in US. She's coming back home in her own city where she was born almost one century ago. And really, for me, mission is accomplished with that exhibition because 15 years ago, she was still invisible. She was not known. We raised her name into history of photography. For me, that show in New York at Fotografiska means a lot because it's a recognition of her work from her country, from her culture, and her town. Mainly, the exhibit is the pictures we have in that exhibition are taken in New York. It's such a contemporary language settled again in the same place as she took the picture 60 years ago.

Alison Stewart: Sophie, the exhibition is the first time in the US that a complete presentation of Vivian Maier's body of work. Now, for someone who thinks they know her work, what do you think this exhibit shows about the work?

Sophie Wright: I think a lot is written about Vivian's work. I personally thoroughly enjoy this curation because I think it's, first of all-- kudos to Anne- it's very beautifully done. I'm delighted our team was able to realize it with her. I think what's lovely is one sees a kind of evolution in her work, from the early pictures through to a more abstracted language, which was really interesting for me because I think she's known predominantly as a street photographer. We all know that street photography is a very big umbrella term, but I think there's a sophistication in the work that perhaps is more abstract, the quite complex compositions that one isn't so familiar with.

Particularly as if you've watched the documentary where there's obviously a lot of self-portraiture and work with children. I think what's lovely is that, and then also the combination of color that I haven't seen before either, and the film work, which I think is very insightful in the way that she worked around finding her pictures.

Alison Stewart: This exhibit took 15 years in the making. What were some of the challenges you faced as you put together your curatorial vision?

Anne Morin: It has been probably, in my professional career, the most difficult case I have to face. The reason is why, first, it was a complete virgin landscape. No one jump into that story. Not any other curator could have been at least a kind of references for me. I faced, really, a kind of Mary Magdalene, and what do I do? How do I do? How can I reveal the face of someone who we don't know about? Also the fact that her archive, and you said that 150,000 negatives, which is huge, how can you tidy this? How you can reveal the architecture of the archive?

It has been long. I took my time. I had to do it in that I had to do it slowly and make sure that I did any mistake. I took the time, really, to see once and many times the pictures, all the films, I listen the tapes that we have also in the exhibition, some soundtracks. After, I would say, 12 years, I really thought that I was ready to propose an exhibition of that level. For me, that exhibition really projected her name into history of photography and I think it's a correct approximation of our work.

Alison Stewart: There's a paragraph introducing the show that ends liking Vivian Maier's work to Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Anne, tell us why you think Maier's work belongs in the canon.

Anne Morin: Oh, just look at the picture, you will see immediately that how strong, how well composed, how sure she was when she was taking a picture. There's plenty of stories to tell about the reason why probably she took all that pictures, but she had the density of the pictures, the perfect composition. The fact that she use also to take just one picture for one scene, project her work, her language, in a very high level. The richness and the complexity of her language also proceeds to the fact that she was autodidact. She never learned photography, so she really open a new territory in photography.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Anne Morin. She's curator and director of diChroma photography. She also curated the show, and Sophie Wright, executive director of Fotografiska. We're talking about Vivian Maier: Unseen Work. It's at Fotografiska until September 29th. You mentioned there are so many different negatives, but the way that you organized this exhibition is into different categories, like street and childhood and self-portraits. Sophie, obviously, you've put on a lot of shows at Fotagrafiska, and this exhibit has images of the photographer she took of herself, and they're not straightforward photographs. She took pictures of herself in mirrors, with glimpses of herself in windows. One shot shows a check on the purse with her name. What was unusual to you about the way that Vivian Maier took a photo of herself?

Sophie Wright: With huge creativity? I think Anne talks very beautifully about this. It's almost like a self-actualization, but it's also a very experimental approach to self-portraiture. I mean, we all take selfies these days, but it's the work of a very, very thoughtful and playful individual that's really trying to piece herself together in some ways, from just a shadow on a wall through to multiple images over multiple mirrors in a shop window. She's been extremely experimental and playful with that, but I do think there's something about the act of self-actualization. Anne talks about the fact that she was a nanny. She was really invisible in many ways. And I think the self portraiture piece is a very strong component of the exhibition for that reason.

Alison Stewart: Anne, what do we learn about Vivian Maier from the images that she took of herself?

Anne Morin: This chapter of self representation is probably the chapter that makes a difference with other photographers. She's really the photographer in the 20th century who dive really deep into that problematic of self-representation. Nowadays, Vivian Maier is more than a work, is more than a story, and she's really a phenomenon, it's because it talks to our times. It talks to this problem of identities that is solved, in a way, with all that selfies which are running on social media. Really, the heartbeating of the work, the main center of Vivian Maier, is self-representation.

Yes, as you said, Sophie, the question that Vivian Maier was a nanny, and she belongs to the dark side of the American dream, and she belongs to the invisibility. At the end, the necessity to self-represent herself so many times per year and almost 500 self-portrait during 45 years, it's a lot. It's an act of resistance against a society that erased completely that class of working class, I should say. Really, it's something apart, and the vocabulary she use, the syntaxes she use for self-representation. From the shadow till the mirror is opened a large spectrum.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the section Street. She's known for her street photography. She could take an image of an Armenian woman having a fight on East 86th street. That fight happens to be with a police officer. Shots from the Staten Island ferry, people, their outlines of their heads and their images. What do you think caught her attention about street life?

Anne Morin: She was collecting her time, and she has the ability to preview what is going to happen one second after. She's collecting little stories, little narrations. She's between the street American photography and the French humanism. I mean, between movement and contemplation. Also, the fact that she has that ability to just underline the extraordinary, which is in the deep of the ordinary, probably comes from the fact that she was a nanny. A nanny is always in communication, I mean, in the world of kids. Kids have that faculty to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

For me, this is she demonstrates that in order to get the extraordinary, you don't have to go very far. It's just around you, you just have to open your eyes.

Alison Stewart: Yes, there's one exhibit, you brought it up nicely, about what happens before and after a photograph is made. It's a man holding a baby and a balloon in one shot. His face is obscured. It's almost like the baby planned it, but we get to see the before shot, where the balloon is off to the side. Anne, do you think that photographers have a sixth sense about knowing what can come next?

Anne Morin: Absolutely. There are animals, really. I think they have the same instinct and intuition as animals that belong to specific territory. Vivian knew perfectly the language of her time and the language of her city and the language of the people around her moving. She has really the capacity to see how the reality is about to raise and just to end up on the top by a picture, yes.

You see when she left US and she did that tour around the world in 1959, traveling in Tibet, in Malaysia, in China, in Egypt, she did not took any good picture because she did not understood. She did not fit in that culture and she was not able to see the reality with the same eyes.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting. The imagery that she took abroad didn't have the same feel?

Anne Morin: No, she did not fit completely. She was not in 100%, I would say, living in the space. I would say she was not occupying the space with the same capacity. When she's in New York, when she's in France, or when she's in Chicago, she's just able really, like an animal. I think it's really the same thing and you cannot explain that. It's just a sensation. It's just that it's about to happen even before you can say one word. This is the power of Vivian Maier and you see that perfectly in the exhibition at Fotgrafiska.

Alison Stewart: You're listening to my conversation about the exhibit Vivian Maier: Unseen Work on view now at Fotografiska. We'll have more with curator Anne Morin and Fotografiska's executive director, Sophie Wright, after a quick break. This is All of It.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All of It on WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. We continue my conversation about the exhibit Vivian Maier: Unseen Work on view now at Fotografiska. It's the first major retrospective of photographer Maier's work here in the United States. Here's more from curator and director of diChroma photography, Anne Morin, and Fotografiska's executive director, Sophie Wright.

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Alison Stewart: Anne, there's an interesting section about cropping a photo. Right next to each other are two croppings of the same photo. It's a man reading the paper. One is a very close cropping, one is a wider shot. Would you explain their positioning and how did Vivian Maier see the positioning because one's hers and one's not?

Anne Morin: The print of, I would say, printed in the complete view, I mean not cropped, is a modern print that we wanted. We did not crop any pictures. The cropped picture was done by and printed by Vivian Maier. It's a cinematic gesture, in a way. The fact that when she had that laboratory in a bathroom in Chicago from 1956 to 1967, during 11 years, she's been developing and she's been printing. She was not a good printer, but she was playing at the same time because cropping is taking a picture inside the picture. It's an artistic game, in a way.

However, you see clearly in the exhibitions that the square size is perfect for her. When she change and she moved to 35 millimeters and take pictures in color, you see that that size does not completely work perfectly for her. In a way, I think she's playing and, yes, it's a taking another picture in another picture, but the full frame is just perfect.

Alison Stewart: I do want to ask about Lena Horne smiling. Was that an accident that she ran into Horne?

Anne Morin: Look, I mean, she had a great passion for cinema. She was going to see movies several times per weeks. That smile was really important because when you see the portrait Vivian Maier is taken of people like her-- poor people, low class, social- they never, ever smile because they cannot pretend to be someone else. Smiling is a seduction. Smiling is a being someone else. It's a double, in a way. Poor people don't have the possibility to be someone else. She was fascinated by actors, and she was reading biographies of Judy Garland, Simone Signoret. The fact that also probably she was very tall, and this kind of insurance you have in herself, can allow her to just get close to her. She did not had anything to lose, no?

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Vivian Maier. Unseen Work at Fotografiska until September 29th. My guests are his curator, Anne Morin, and Sophie Wright, executive director of Fotografiska. Let's talk about gestures, the section on gestures. There's pictures of people sneezing and snoring and back of heads and tight curls, a man who's got a little rip in his pants. There's a woman fixing her shoe. Sophie, I'm going to ask you this. What keeps these from being mean-spirited?

Sophie Wright: I think there's a sense of playfulness about them. I think she had a very democratic eye. I don't think she would have turned it on herself. There's so much self-portraiture, after all, in the show any differently. I think what's the wonderful is they're portraits of totally unselfconscious bodies. I think that's the art of the photographers capturing those moments where their inner worlds really are laid bare. I love the sleeping pictures, but I don't think she would have treated a photograph of herself any differently, honestly. I think everything is fair game in the lens of her camera.

Alison Stewart: She used a Roloflex camera. I'm wondering if that had an impact on the kind of photo she was able to take because she was tall as you said, and you could look through the top of the camera to take a picture, yes?

Anne Morin: Absolutely. I think that the fact she looks that way allow her to have to face and to look really what she was facing. She cannot hide behind a camera. She only can face what she sees. This is the reason, for me, at least, why her portrait are so strong because you see perfectly that there's a communication between the one with the subject and herself. It's a beautiful relationship. However, it's just one second, which is not true because sometimes she takes a second picture and then she would be back one week later with the print and giving the print to the person, but that's really a human power. The fact that she faced these people and look in their eyes and tell the story. However, it's a silent story.

Alison Stewart: In the childhood section, as you can imagine, she has beautiful photos of children. Kids playing by the pool to a small girl with tears just welling up in her eyes. She gets the kids looking not just cute, but really showing emotion. Anne, what did she capture about children's faces that others didn't?

Anne Morin: I think first she capture the childhood she never had and the words you said about motion, emotion, but also motion because childhood is a place for the constant movement. This constant movement will bring her to develop a certain specificity in her language and bring her from photography to cinema. I'm quite sure that all that question of movement that belongs to the childhood will project her in a new sphere of her language. Of course, I mean, all those kids were kids she was taking care of, but also kids she was meeting or viewing in the streets, that she did not know.

Yes, the childhood is really important in the fact that she was a photographer. I mean, the impact is there's many consequences, I would say. She's playing with them. In the soundtrack we have in the exhibition, you see how much not only she takes care of them, but there's really a necessity to educate them, to bring them an identity, to help them to build that identity, to have an opinion, to know, to be clever, to think, et cetera. All those things are part of her. I mean, it's not Vivian in her photography, it's just the photography belongs to Vivian Maier.

Alison Stewart: Sophie, you mentioned the evolution of her work, and we get to see some color, some colorful photos. What is the addition of color? Tell us about Vivian Maier.

Sophie Wright: I think it's interesting to see her playing with color photography. I think it's her formal qualities, really that are the most strong in the way that she photographs. I'm not so sure that color photography is her best, but I think it's very interesting to see her use it. There's a lot of still life and objects together. I keep thinking of the series of images of eyes that are extremely refined and abstracted, really.

I think there's one where there's a color image of a child's eye looking through the weave of a chair, which I think goes back to what Anne was saying about the way children encounter their world. The way that they're so open to how they move through the world, the freedom that they have in terms of how they look at the world. I think that works for me as a color image. I think seeing the films in color, the street photographs in color, and then seeing the black and white image beside it is quite interesting as well. Undoubtedly, it's a part of her practice and good to see in the context of the unseen work, but I think I always return to the black and white.

Alison Stewart: I have two final questions. First, Sophie, this is for you. The show Vivian Maier: Unseen will be seen up until September 29th, the final exhibition for Fotografiska in this space. For people who haven't seen it, it's in this beautiful Flemish Renaissance building on 22nd. In part, made famous by Anna Delvey and her shenanigans. The show has put on great shows. David La Chapelle, Maya Lynn, very, very cool photography. What is Fotografiska looking for a new space?

Sophie Wright: We have a very beautiful building right now, undeniably so. Actually, it's made a beautiful foil for this exhibition, and I hope your audience come and check it out while while it's here. I've been in post since April 2022. Really, what I've observed over my time here is, although it is a wonderful building, it's got actually quite a small footprint. It's very vertical. Our audience, when we're flipping our shows, can have quite a bumpy experience traveling through the building from the sixth floor down. What we're really looking for is a space that's probably less vertical, which I know is not the easiest in New York, and also with some higher ceilings.

Although the more classic work of Vivian sits well in the space, when we're dealing with contemporary photography and multimedia artists, in fact, we need higher ceilings for larger-scale pieces. It's a double-pronged thing, really, but fundamentally, it's focused on the best that we can do in terms of presenting the work of the artists that we represent in our spaces and giving our audience as good an experience as they can.

Alison Stewart: Anne, for you there is in the exhibition her hat, Vivian Maier's hat. Why did you want to put the hat in the exhibition?

Anne Morin: In the exhibition, there's not only a hat, there's a soul also, and she's really there. Really, you feel a huge emotion. Why a hat? Because it's really a signature. It talks about a face that we don't know, a figure that does not have face. It's just enough her hat to symbolize her presence in the exhibition. It's just a wink to her.

Alison Stewart: Vivian Maier: Unseen Work is at Fotografiska until September 29th at the 22nd and Park Avenue location. My guests have been curator, Anne Morin, curator and director of diChroma photography, and Sophie Wright, executive director of Fotografiska. Thank you both for joining us.

Anne Morin: Thank you so much.

Sophie Wright: Thank you so much.

Anne Morin: A pleasure.

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Alison Stewart: Coming up is a mental health Monday conversation about women in sports, featuring a new book called The Price She Pays, co-authored by therapists who work with student-athletes, one who was a D1 athlete. Then expanding on the book Bowling Alone, a new documentary called Join or Die suggests that joining social clubs can help save American democracy. That's up next after the news.

 

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