Friday, May 2, 2014

Pamela Bannos's Search for Vivian Maier

Vintage transparency from the Ron Slattery Collection,
April 22, 1955, Central Park.
Ektachrome 120 fillm, 12 ASA , E-2 processed

Pamela Bannos, a photographer who teaches at Northwestern University, is quoted in a Daily Beast post and is increasingly recognized as a scholar with a deeper understanding of Vivian Maier's enigmatic photographic legacy. Vivian Maier has been trivialized as "Mary Poppins with a camera." Bannos argues that it is men who are controlling Maier's work and legacy and hence how the public understands of Maier's life and body of work. The recently released documentary, Finding Vivian Maier, is adding more fuel to the fire. For example, Rose Lichter-Mark's tuned-in analysis of the film, "Vivian Maier and the Problem of Difficult Women" in the New Yorker, further unpacks the emerging gender issues. Bannos presented a complex lecture "Vivian Maier's Fractured Archive" at Lawrence University on Thursday, May 1, 2014m in the Wriston Auditorium. She examined Maier's cameras, locations, methods, and choices as evidenced in the archive Maier left behind.