Fri 1/10
The less-than-a-year-old Cleveland Print Room scored quite a coup when it landed the chance to show Out of the Shadows by Vivian Maier.
Maier worked in Chicago for four decades, producing keenly observed black & white street photography of the city’s changing human and physical landscape. While the work is impressive, recalling work by photographers like Eugene Atget, Berenice Abbott, Henry Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Frank, her backstory is a large part of why her work is attracting international attention — the discovery of an unknown artist who worked in complete obscurity.
Maier worked as a nanny for affluent families in Chicago’s north shore suburbs, taking the train into the city on her off time to walk around with her twin-lens reflex camera. She boldly roamed in areas where a middle-aged white woman would be warned not to go. Her photos of Chicago’s ravaged west side following the riots of 1967 are unforgettable. They resemble not the trendy “ruin porn” of abandoned buildings in Detroit but rather the bombed-out remains of a war-torn city — Sarajevo, Beirut, Dresden.
She never showed her work during her lifetime (she died in 2009 at the age of 83). It was only after her death that a Chicago-based real estate agent and a Chicago art collector, who had acquired negative, prints, and audio and video tapes left in a storage locker, began to publish and organize showings of her work.
While the exhibition at the Cleveland Print Room has some examples of her street photography, it’s also heavy on sparer and more reflective photos of her suburban environment, as well as her self-portraits. That work looks more ordinary. It’s her stealthily grabbed photos of downtown pedestrians, preoccupied with their destinations and their errands, and scenes from the now-gone Maxwell Street market that catch and hold the eye and offer up the most material for contemplation.
The show opened Friday January 10 and will be at the Cleveland Print Room through February 23. Gallery hours are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday noon-6pm, and Wednesday 3-8pm.
Cool Cleveland was at the opening taking photos. View the PHOTOSTREAM here.
