Untitled by Vivan Maier
A few days ago Raul posted about the photography of Vivan Maier, whose story has been stuck on my mind since it first crossed my screen. In the 60’s and 70’s, Maier was a nanny and prolific street photographer in Chicago. She took nearly 50,000 exposures but she didn’t show them to anyone. In fact, 15,000 of her negatives were still left unprocessed in their rolls when a box of Maier’s belongings was acquired at a furniture and antique auction.
John Maloof, who purchased Maier’s negatives, writes:
I found her name written with pencil on a photo-lab envelope. I decided to ‘Google’ her about a year after I purchased these only to find her obituary placed the day before my search. She passed only a couple of days before my inquiry on her.
I wanted to meet her in person well before I found her obituary but, the auction house had stated she was ill, so I didn’t want to bother her. So many questions would have been answered if I had.
It’s not entirely clear why Maier’s film archive ended up getting auctioned off before she had even passed away (“the auction house acquired her belongings from her storage locker that was sold off due to delinquent payments”) but what a wonderful introduction it was for Maloof, who “didn’t know what ‘street photography’ was.”
Thankully, Maloof has been an excellent steward of Maier’s work, posting new photos regularly and researching the backstory. Aside from how beautiful the images are I can hardly wrap my head around the fact that Maier never these things to anyone during her lifetime. Maybe it’s a reflection of how Millennial I am, but is there anyone who doesn’t share their work anymore? Digital photography, desktop publishing, and the internet have created an irresistible culture of amateur everything that anyone, anywhere can participate in.
Some think we should resist the temptation to overshare and keep to ourselves, that the constant stream of opinions on “the internet is slowly going to take down all creativity.” For others, the internet was the first place where they found people “like them” and could share ideas, sometimes anonymously.
As an experiment in writing more and doing something private in the age of oversharing, I will be writing 750 words every day for the next month, and no you cannot read them (so far, nor would you want to).
I stumbled across 750 Words after reading about it on a Tumblr that I follow and was quickly sucked into how focused and well-executed the site is. The idea is pretty self-explanatory: “Write at least 750 words, private, unfiltered, spontaneous, daily.”
I am officially signed up for the April challenge, meaning that if I write at least 750 words every day of the month I will be listed on the wall of awesomeness, buy myself lots of ice cream, and send a few cups of patronage Buster’s way. If I fail I will be listed on the wall of shame, donate at least $5, and feel horrible about my life.
Not like writing every day in a notebook for-my-eyes-only is a new concept at all, but 750 Words appeals to my:
- ability to type faster than I write by hand
- need for reminders, consequences, and rewards
- love for infographics
Oh, the infographics! At the end of the day, your words are (sort of clumsily*) picked apart by a Regressive Image Dictionary (for the emotions) and a Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count system. It also accepts an unlimited number of specially formatted meta-data pairs, which will be charted over time.
Yesterday I missed writing because I was up until 3am and forgot that the day technically ends at 12am. This system is strict but it’s also addictively encouraging. Though I’m on my third year of the Five Year Diary, I’ve been a little spotty, especially lately. Even if I were to miss an entire month of 750 words over the next year, that’s still 25,000+ words. Here goes nothing, or at least nothing that you can see!
* I found out, for example, that the word “critique” automatically indicates negative emotions even though critiques are just a part of my everyday life at school. But on second thought maybe the machine is right about that…
