MK Gallery, Milton Keynes
The extraordinary life story of the nanny who was secretly a street photographer can overshadow her groundbreaking images – but at the first UK show of her work they take spectacular centre stage
In her lifetime, while working as a nanny in New York and Chicago, and living an intensely private existence, Vivian Maier simultaneously created around 150,000 photographs, her other life unbeknown even to those who employed her. Unsurprisingly, given the creative canonisation that followed the discovery of her archive in 2007, the myth of Vivian Maier has tended to receive as much, if not more, attention than her actual images. This deftly curated exhibition, comprising just 140 photographs, goes some way to redressing that imbalance.
Anthology highlights the range of Maier’s work – street scenes, snatched portraits and mischievous self-portraits as well as formal architectural studies, urban still lifes and angular closeups of arms, torsos, skin and fabric – but also her eye for moments of quiet intimacy or reverie. Sometimes, she seems so close to her subjects that you long to know what happened just after they heard the click of her shutter. Often, one or two individuals are singled out for her attention, freeze-framed amid the street bustle and bathed in light and shadow: a young woman in profile, her face veiled, appears both glamorous and mysterious as if she had stepped out of a noir film; two women, both draped in fox-fur stoles, caught from behind while deep in conversation; a dapper, bequiffed young man stares intensely at a pigeon that has landed, wings outspread, on his hand to peck at a bag of birdseed.
