More on Vivian Maier

In January, I wrote about Vivian Maier, a prolific photographer from Chicago who was largely unknown until her death when some of her work was discovered.

Mother Jones recently featured some of her work in its May/June 2011 issue, 'The Best Street Photographer You've Never Heard Of' written by Alex Kotlowitz. This sums up her work well

MAIER'S WORK IS PART OF THE decades-old genre of street photography, a field that has included such giants as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus. (Judging by her collection of books on photography, Maier was likely aware of their work.) These photographers speak to the profoundly democratic impulse to acknowledge that we all have a place—that our stories matter. She took photos of the downtrodden and the well-heeled. She took photos of festive people and people in distress. She took photos of children and the aged. She took photos of whites and blacks (notable, given the times). Her work is marked by serendipity; she appeared to have no agenda, but instead captured what she stumbled upon. Joel Meyerowitz, the co-author of Bystander: A History of Street Photography and a renowned photographer in his own right, says of Maier's images: "They are full of wit and surprise and playful spirit...Her basic decent humanism is evident everywhere in her photographs."

Read more, which includes some stunning photographs.

Photograph by Vivian Maier/John Maloof Collection

Vivian Maier, photographer extraordinaire and chronicler of Chicago history.

Vivian Maier - unseen photographer

Broadcast by PBS affiliate WTTW on Chicago Tonight (22 December 2010), this story about Vivian Maier has left many historians and photographers gasping. Vivian Maier was a prolific photographer in Chicago, whose work is only now coming to light, following her death in 2009. There are more than 100,000 photographs by Maier still to be seen.



The majority of the collection is now owned by John Maloof, with around 12,000 held by Jeff Goldstein.

John Maloof, Anthony Rydzon and Lars Mortensen are in the process of producing a full-length documentary film, Finding Vivian Maier. You can back the project through Kickstarter.


A book will also be published by powerHouse Books.

See also
- article in Chicago magazine
- John Maloof's website/blog vivianmaier.com
- Jeff Goldstein's website Vivian Maier Photography
- YouTube channel vivianmaierphoto (Maier also took some video films)

A grand final with no winner or loser

The 2010 season AFL grand final was on this afternoon. Collingwood Magpies and Saint Kilda played both drew at 68 points apiece at full time. There was no extra time. Both teams now have to go through it all over again next Saturday.

Both players and supporters expressed the same feeling.


Photo by by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images (via PicApp)


Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images (via PicApp)

Snowmaggedon

Recent heavy snowfalls in Washington DC have been dubbed 'snowmaggedon' by residents including President Obama.

It does make a nice postcard picture though.



From the White House's Flickr stream. Thanks to Miles Fisher for the tweet.

astro tweets

Wow, Buzz Aldrin is on Twitter twitter.com/TheRealBuzz

A few NASA (and non-NASA) astronauts are also on Twitter and have been tweeting from the International Space Station (ISS). According to the website, currently at ISS are astronauts

Jeff Williams (Twitter - Astro_Jeff)
Maxim Suraev
Oleg Kotov
T.J. Creamer (Astro_TJ)
Soichi Noguchi (Astro_Soichi)

It seems that Jose Hernandez (Astro_Jose) has also been tweeting from space.

I've been following most of them for the past few weeks and Soichi's twitpics (photos) from space over the past two weeks have been amazing.


Sydney, Australia (two hours ago)

Thanks to Claire O'Neill at NPR for the prompt.

wild budgies

The above photo was taken by Ann Britton who submitted it as a user submitted photo to the ABC. It shows a flock of budgerigars at Boulia in far west Queensland (15 October 2009).

Budgerigars (also called budgies) are such a common (bird) pet that it's easy to forget that they are native to Australia and flock in the wild.


Close up of a pet budgie by Amos T Fairchild from Wikipedia.

The budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus) is a very hardy species.

Sydney dust storm

We had the dust storm yesterday in Canberra and it passed to Sydney today and made the news big time. It barely rated a mention in Canberra yesterday.

ABC published some great photos. This one was exceptional given the contrasting colour and balance. Compliments to the photographer.


(photo: ABC Ryan Lahiff)

It works as orange and blue are opposites in the colour wheel, to put it simply.

Abbey Road 40

One of the great things about the old long play (LP) vinyl record was the artwork. One of the best was The Beatles' Abbey Road. The photo by the late Iain Macmillan was taken on 8 August 1969.





It is probably the most copied or parodied album cover.



Lawrence Pollard wrote a great article for BBC World Service

The idea for the cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road album was initially to call it Everest, after the favourite brand of cigarettes smoked by their engineer Geoff Emerik.

Then the thought of doing a Himalayan cover helped kill the idea, and instead they considered doing shoot closer to home.

"There's a sketch Paul McCartney did with four little stick men crossing the Zebra," says Brian Southall, author of the history of Abbey Road Studios.

"It gave a pretty good idea of what they wanted."

On the 8 August 1969 that the Fab Four walked out of No 3 Abbey Road, having finished basic work on what would be - and they subsequently said they knew would be - their last album.

The photographer who took the famous cover shot was the late Iain Macmillan, a close friend of Brian Southall's, who knew the Beatles through working with Yoko Ono.

"He was given about 15 minutes," says Mr Southall.

"He stood up a stepladder while a policeman held up the traffic, the band walked back and forth a few times and that was that."

He only took seven or eight pictures, now in the Apple archive, but they're fascinating for their difference to the end product we all know.

Conspiracy theories

Most striking is the one of the band walking in the opposite direction (right to left), caught mid-stride in different poses.

It looks all wrong of course, and draws attention to the accidental symmetry - despite Paul being out of step - of the final cover shot with its pattern of four firm inverted V shapes.

In one of the alternative takes Paul McCartney is wearing sandals he kicked off during the shoot.

This matters if you remember how the album cover was taken as evidence for the conspiracy theories that "Paul is Dead."

Barefooted, out of step, the car number plate behind him referring to his age - 28 if he'd lived - the Beatles forming a funeral procession for him.

George was cast as the gravedigger, Ringo the undertaker, and John the priest.

Years later in 1993, the very much alive Paul McCartney would spoof the cover and the rumours for his "Paul is Live" concert album.

A lesser noted curiosity is that the album cover has no writing on it and is just the picture.

That is thanks to John Kosh, who at the time, was creative director at Apple.

"I insisted we didn't need to write the band's name on the cover," he says.

"They were the most famous band in the world after all - EMI said they'd never sell any albums if we didn't say who the band was, but I got my way, and got away with it."

Zebra stripes

And it is hard to think of an album cover that has been so thoroughly repeated.

Dozens of bands have put stripes on their cover, like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but of course the biggest tribute comes from the thousands of fans and tourists who go to leafy north London every year.

If you want to check the crossing now, there's a webcam.

Watch it for a while and you will see scampering fans snatching at a gap in the traffic to recreate the shoot - much to the annoyance of local drivers.

One black taxi cabbie, Ron, who also used to drive a bus down Abbey Road, told the BBC World Service: "I come here all the time and its always been the same - it really does annoy you."

"All they're doing is posing on the crossing. Someone's going to get mown down one of these days there's no doubt about it."

Here's hoping Ron avoids the crossing on Saturday morning when Beatles fans will stage a mass crossing in honour of the photo shoot.

It is not known how many of those fans are injured on the crossing every year.

But the council have to repaint the wall next to the crossing every three months to cover over fans' graffiti.

And the Abbey Road street sign has now been mounted out of reach up a wall, so often has it been defaced or stolen.

If there was a way to steal the stripes off the zebra you can bet Beatle's fans would have taken them too.

Or maybe they haven't thanks to the rumour that the famous crossing you now see isn't actually the original and has been moved for safety reasons.

And who would want to steal the wrong zebra crossing?

Let it be.

nobody would eat a live chicken

I had a medical appointment in the city today and was amazed to find a few new restaurants had opened up. This was in the window of one of them.

I should hope that the chicken being served with salted fish and bean curd had died.

Right Whale of a time

Brian Skerry's photographs are featured in the October 2008 National Geographic.



His notes are fascinating

It must have been pretty nerve-racking having such a large animal swim up to you.

It was amazing. I mean, I have to tell you there were days when I was at the bottom at 70 feet, and here comes this bus swimming down. I’m standing on the bottom, and as it comes down, I get on my knees, lean over backwards—my scuba tank is now digging into the sand. And of course their eyes are on the side of their heads, so it had to turn and look at me. It came within inches. Here’s this softball-size whale eye looking at me. But then it stops—stops on a dime. It’s just hovering there, and literally one flick of its tail, and it would have crushed me like a bug. But it doesn’t. It was just highly curious.

Awesome!

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Almost ready to go to Brisbane tomorrow.

mince sculptures

I took this photo at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne on Saturday. A vegetarian's nightmare, but there is something strikingly beautiful about symmetry, even if it is made up of dead cows.



Speaking of food, I also met Maggie Beer today at Melbourne Airport. She seemed happy that I called her a Living Legend.

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It was a good weekend in Melbourne, catching up with a couple of friends as well as going to two football games.

prime ministerial gestures

I like these photos of our Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during his visit to China.

prime ministerial blessing or a wave


prime ministerial finger pointing


He is also becoming quite assertive with the Chinese government, commenting on Tibet.

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Another so so day at work. And a little slap on the knuckles at work with a reminder not to communicate sensitive views via the email, even to colleagues, but to use the telephone.

window washing at my building

The building in which I work is on six levels, ground floor to fifth floor. I work on the fourth floor.

Every now and again, the windows need cleaning on the outside. It is always a fun distraction in the office.







I don't take a camera to work, but the camera feature on my mobile (cell) phone is pretty good.

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So glad for Friday and the weekend. Work has been crazy.

Tonight, Mary came over with Momo during their walk, so we had a beer. He's still a silly puppy.