Street Photography is a style of photography that celebrates the small wonders of everyday life. In the last couple of years it has become something of a fashion statement and some very wonderful photography has resulted. Indeed it has become so popular that it supports several festivals worldwide, the most notable local example being the London Festival of Photography, running throughout June in Kings Cross, Bloomsbury, Euston & Fitzrovia
This book is a record of the photography of Vivian Maier, an extraordinary woman who left an archive of magnificent black and white observational photography shot between 1950 and 1990 in boxes, unseen by anyone and only discovered after her death when editor John Maloof discovered a box of her negatives in an auction house in Chicago. The story goes that having recognised the value of his find, he hunted down other examples of her work and pieced together this book, a record of her life and her photography.
The quality of the pictures is remarkable considering she worked alone, without peers and showed her work to nobody. As a record of post war western culture it is superb, as a volume of street photography it is practically peerless. Surely a one off, never to be repeated in today’s hyper sharing, socially mediated world of digital delights. A wonderful book, highly recommended, its published by powerHouse Books and can be found on amazon for a very reasonable £31.
