Vivian Maier

I’ve never been cutting edge—on anything, really.  I’m almost always so far behind the cultural curve that the beginning is long out of sight.  But recently, I can say I was there at the beginning of something that, or so it seems, is important: the discovery of a “new” artist, Vivian Maier.

“New” is in quotation marks as the great street photographer was totally unknown until after her death.  She was discovered by John Maloof when he bought a box of negatives from a storage space that was being auctioned.  He didn’t realize what he had at first, but once he got into the negatives, he realized that here was a true artist with the camera.  He went back and searched for the buyers of other boxes, bought them, and eventually ended up with over 100,000 photographs, many—perhaps even most—of a remarkably high quality.  Maloof didn’t really know what to do with them, but he had some high quality prints made, framed them, and talked the Chicago Cultural Center into showing them.  The show was a huge success, the biggest exhibit in the Cultural Center’s history.

And that’s where I come in: I saw an article about the exhibit at the Cultural Center and went to see it with my good buddy Roger.  We were astonished at these photos—and the story behind them, and I have become a fan of this talented woman, visiting all three of the exhibitions held here in Chicago.  Vivian Maier was a nanny in New York City and Chicago.  She never had an exhibit; apparently, she never shared her photos, many of which were still undeveloped, and she died in obscurity.  Without the foresight of John Maloof, these photos might have been lost or destroyed.

And now Maloof has made a documentary film about Vivian Maier: Finding Vivian Maier.  It’s a brilliant film and I encourage everyone with any interest in photography to see it.  The film’s web site is http://www.findingvivianmaier.com/.  And the web site devoted to her photos is http://www.vivianmaier.com/.

With shows around the world and news stories on the major networks and in all the major papers, Maier is no longer unknown.  And I was there for the very first exhibit.  

Resurrecting the Dead

I have few regrets about my life.  I figure if one is happy with the way life has turned out, then one must be grateful for all that went before, good and bad.  And so I am.  But of course there are a few moments one would like to go back and change.  For me, a major regret is that I never got an advanced degree.  That’s especially sad as I went through an entire master of arts program in creative writing, 1973-1974, did all the course work, and completed everything, including a thesis.  Since it was a creative writing program, my thesis was a novel.  Mine was called In Mighty Silence.  I worked on it for a year under the supervision of the writer in residence, Marilyn Harris.  At the end of the year, instead of submitting the novel for final approval and sitting for the oral defense, I decided, in a moment of noble foolishness, that the book wasn’t good enough.  I was going to write another one.  Ah, well, you can see where this is going.  So I did everything except the actual oral defense of the thesis, put the novel away—and then never wrote another.  Or another one for the masters program.  Not having the advanced degree didn’t seem to affect my getting a job in Oklahoma and Texas, but it certainly affected my salary for those 26 years I taught.  And I feel educationally “incomplete,” unfinished, as it were.

I haven’t dwelt on it over the years; what would be the point.  But there is that little niggling regret always in the back of my mind.  I wouldn’t be thinking about it now, or blogging about it, except, much to my surprise, I found the manuscript of the novel the last time I was in Texas, a manuscript that I thought was long lost.  It was tucked into a cache of papers I had stored.  When I went to clean out the storage space and toss most of the junk in there, I found In Mighty Silence.

And I have decided to retype it, revising it as I go, almost exactly 40 years on from finishing the novel, resurrecting the characters like zombies.  So far, it’s been an interesting experience, to say the least, and I’ve only just finished chapter 1.  The novel is better than I expected it would be; and it’s still not very good.  But I am plodding away on it, reworking it as best I can, trying to read the faded type through the yellowed paper, my marks and corrections, Marilyn’s annotations, missing pages, duplicated and altered pages.  I have no plans for publication, although should I get it into some kind of finished product I’ll have a few copies printed up for . . .  I don’t know why.  My “legacy”?  That seems hardly worth the time.  It’s probably just to get a sense of completion, even though I’ll not get the degree for it.  But having the book in front of me, printed up, copyrighted, bound with a cover, somehow makes the time I spent on it somewhat worthwhile.

I’ve done more foolish things for much less reward.