One of the things I admire most about photojournalists and street photographers is their ability to capture life in action. Raw. No posing or fancy lighting or perfectly placed props or planning meetings. There’s something magical about looking into the faces of the people in their photos, frozen in time, and wondering what must have been going through their minds or how their life had taken shape.
This weekend I had some time to kill in Los Feliz, so I decided to flip through some of the fabulous coffee table books at Skylight Books. In the midst of my wandering, I discovered a book of photographs by Vivian Maier, a New York City/Chicago nanny who took thousands of captivating photos throughout her fascinating lifetime (1926-2009) and was only discovered in 2007 when historian John Maloof came across her work, found in a local-Chicago thrift auction house. Not only was I fascinated by Maier’s life, which very much broke the mold of her generation, but also by her photos, which were beautiful, haunting, funny and intriguing all at the same time.
I think when I wrote Summer Bucket List item No. 12, become a better photographer, (more on my progress with that in a later post), I really had photos like these in mind. A girl can dream …
{Photos by Vivian Maier}
Celeste
Kim
