Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows [Hardcover]

Richard Cahan (Author), Michael Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 2012

Presenting her breathtaking photographs alongside revealing interviews with those who knew her best, this volume is the first attempt to put Vivian Maier's work in context and create a moving portrait of her as an artist. Though she created more than 120,000 negatives during her lifetime, only a few were ever seen by others. Shortly after her death in 2009, the first group of her unseen photographs--gritty with humanity and filled with empathy and beauty--were shown online. What followed was a firestorm of attention, catapulting Maier from previous obscurity to being labeled as one of the masters of street photography. Her work has appeared in numerous museum exhibits and a feature-length documentary on her life and art has already been planned. Features more than 300 duotone photos printed on 105# paper with flood varnish.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Excitement over the mysterious “nanny photographer” went viral after a selection of Maier’s commanding black-and-white photographs were displayed online shortly after her death in 2009. Her never-before-seen work was discovered after the contents of her storage lockers were auctioned off because she couldn’t pay the bills. Now the brilliant and intrepid photo reclamation and writing team of Cahan and Williams (The Lost Panoramas, 2011) tell Maier’s deeply moving story. They conferred with everyone they could find who knew Maier and chose 300 galvanizing photographs—most unprinted, many undeveloped—from the tens of thousands she shot. We learn that Maier, of French and Austrian descent, was born in New York City in 1926, raised in the French Alps, traveled the world with her camera, and settled in a Chicago suburb in 1956. She lived frugally while working as a nanny and caregiver, continually taking pictures of her young charges and their world and of Chicago’s see-it-all streets, composing urban tableaus of penetrating wit and empathy. Maier was “painfully private,” outspoken, unconventional, gutsy, and compassionate, and her long-secret photographs evince a profound clarity of vision and intent. Cahan and Williams compare Maier to Emily Dickinson, and her life and work do speak to our most cherished sense of what art is and why it matters. --Donna Seaman

Review

"Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows, in my opinion, presents her work in exactly the correct manner" --Kenneth Tanaka, The Online Photographer

“This book is fascinating and a revelation. Not only is it beautiful and compelling and haunting, it is a life in photographs. You will never read a more definitive book about Vivian Maier than Out of the Shadows.”  —Rick Kogan

“Now the brilliant and intrepid photo reclamation and writing team of Cahan and Williams tell Maier’s deeply moving story. They conferred with everyone they could find who knew Maier and chose 300 galvanizing photographs—most unprinted, many undeveloped—from the tens of thousands she shot.”  —Booklist Starred Review

“Digging through the unprecedented treasure trove of tens of thousands of images taken by Maier, a private street photographer who never shared her work in her lifetime, Cahan and Williams have unearthed a beautiful, haunting collection of a private woman and gifted artist.”  —Publishers Weekly

“The thoughtful and, indeed, heartfelt text manages to enrich the experience of looking at her photos and enables us to see this woman not as mere curiosity but as unforgettable artist.”  —Chicago Tribune

“(Starred Review) They show that Vivian Maier was a great artist—not simply “the nanny photographer,” as some have called her.”  —Library Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: CityFiles Press; 1 edition (October 16, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978545095
• ISBN-13: 978-0978545093
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 1.5 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Photo Essays
  • #16 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Collections, Catalogues & Exhibitions

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An Essential Book for Vivian Maier Fans October 3, 2012

By D. Frost

Format:Hardcover

If you love Vivian Maier's work, you'll want this book. The photographs are beautifully reproduced and the authors have gathered the most details about Maier's life we have to date in their biography of her.

So why four stars instead of five? As wonderful as this book is, this collection of Maier's photographs doesn't impress me quite as much as the ones in John Maloof's book, "Vivian Maier: Street Photographer", despite the fact that the reproduction quality of the latter isn't as good. There's a higher percentage of really stunning work in Maloof's book, and those are the photographs that really made Maier an overnight sensation (albeit posthumously). I'm sure a lot of that is attributable to the fact that Maloof is in possession of over 100,000 of Maier's photographs, whereas the Jeffrey Goldstein Collection, which is the source for this book, consists of 20,000 images. Maloof had the luxury of choosing from a much larger stash, and it shows.

But don't get me wrong, the photographs in this book are terrific, and this book richly deserves a place in any serious collection of photography monographs. Someday, after Maloof and Goldstein are finally finished cataloging all of Vivian Maier's prodigious output, we may be lucky enough to get a huge multi-volume retrospective that comprises both collections. In the meantime, this and the Maloof book are the ones to own.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Vivian Maier...who knew? October 28, 2012

By Robin Benson

Format:Hardcover

Another fascinating collection of Maier photos well worth waiting for after Maloof's 'Street photographer' from 2011. This selection is from Jeffrey Goldstein's collection of about sixteen thousand negatives, 225 rolls of film and fifteen hundred color slides (so expect more books and I'm especially interested in how she handled color).

The nine chapters have photos from 1949 to the mid-seventies and so they are a good sampling of the things that caught Maier's eye. The three chapters that I thought worked the best are: 'America' with forty-seven photos of Los Angeles and New York; 'Maxwell' has twenty photos of this Chicago street market; 'Downtown' with thirty-four taken around the Chicago Loop area. These are photos of Maier at her best, capturing the bustle of big city streets with energy and compassion. One thing missing from Maloof's book was an explanation of who was Vivian Maier. 'Out of the shadows' fortunately fills in a lot of detail about her life and interest in photography and each chapter gets a short essay about the photos that follow.

It is inevitable that this book is compared to Maloof's and like another reviewer I prefer his book. It has a much better selection of photos and nearly everyone shows one of Maier's strengths: her ability to create perfect framing. 'Out of the shadows' has many more photos but because of this I thought it also included several that seemed, perhaps, not worth including. The child asleep in a car, page 123, street light on page172, some lit windows floating on a black square, page 277 (it could well be that some some non-specific photos were introduced to create a change of pace as the reader turns the pages, in the 'Street photographer' book several blank pages were used to do this). Maloof's book is also a better production with a good matt art paper for the 200 screen printing which produces solid blacks and mid-tones, something I thought was missing from 'Out of the shadows' though printed with a 175 screen.

Both Maier books, of course, display wonderful photos taken by this extraordinary amateur photographer. Who knew while she was alive? Her legacy will slowly be revealed with each new publication.

***SEE SOME PAGES FROM INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on Vivian Maier November 10, 2012

By Gary T. Johnson

Format:Hardcover

The production qualities alone would make this the best book on Vivian Maier, but it is the insights into this reclusive artist that set it apart. Her images, of course, are the definitive record of her interests and the log of her travels, but the authors also found people who knew her long ago when she was a child in France. They even found some of the individuals in the United States who had Maier as their nanny. The authors also did genealogical research to learn what they could about her family. In years to come, as we get to see more and more of her images, our curiosity will deepen. We wiil be grateful that Cahan and Williams have given us a head start in understanding this unique photographer, along with a selection of her stunning images.