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.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: taking candy from a dead man

When Quinoa Isn't Quinoa Anymore

Hard to say what really makes full transmutation occur.

Gilbert and George (don't suck?)

Suck. 1977. Gilbert & George.

We mostly know Gilbert and George from their large scale photo pieces, often annoyingly unattractive and covering large parcels of gallery real estate. There's more to these boys however, and their concept of 'living sculpture' took Joseph Beuys 'social sculpture' idea into new territory, making themselves diplomats for gay (they prefer queer) identity and reinventing the notion of the artist as prophet/seer/catalyst for social change. We'll forget about the inspiration annoying street performers took from them...

 

Smoking in 1973...

 

Gilbert and George in 2007...

Yves Klein, Out of the Void

A human paintbrush propagates the Yves Klein beauty trip.

A 2013 propagation of the Monotone and Silence Symphony.

The legacy propagated by the Walker Art Center.

Marcel Duchamp Speaks

Obviously he already understood the scope of his influence here. Did he accept his role as prophet or was he simply smugly amused by the whole misunderstanding?

Beck's Song Reader

Beck’s latest project comes in a form that peaked in popularity about 100 years ago—twenty songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music, never before released or recorded. It's up to us to put these into audible form. 6680+ performances of these songs have been posted to YouTube...