Vivian Maier was a nanny with a passion for street photography, or, looking at her life from today’s point of view, an acclaimed street photographer who became famous only after she passed away. Born in 1926, her work was first published in 2008 and reached on-line fame in 2009, a few months after she died. More than a hundred of her works are currently shown at the Willy-Brandt-Haus in Berlin.
Most of her pictures are b/w street portraits from New York and Chicago, often shot from slightly below – this point of view was imposed by the camera she used a lot of the time. Seeing this reminded me of how we, as amateur photographers, tend to take pictures from a slightly different perspective when we use the live view screen than when looking through a view finder. Her later works also feature color photography but despite being very much in love with color photography myself, I thought that her b/w work was much stronger.
The exhibition is still running until April 12, 2015. We made the mistake of going right on the first Sunday after its opening and found it to be rather overcrowded. It is very well worth the visit however, admission is free (do bring a passport to register) and the exhibition has informative descriptions in both English and German.
And if you like, there is more of perelincolors out there:
This article was published on perelincolors.com.
And matching today’s topic, we also have a bit of b/w street photography on instagram today.