Vivian Maier is an artist who is considered one of the greatest street photographers of our time. She was a nanny who lived in Chicago. She never talked about her work when she was alive and became famous for it after she died. That’s when thousands of her negatives were discovered and developed. Some of her work is on display right now at The Photo Center Northwest in Seattle.
Jeffrey Goldstein is a collector and owns the negatives of the photos that are on the walls. We are looking at a black and white picture taken by Vivian Maier. It shows girls, young women, laughing and playing in the shallow waves of Lake Michigan near Chicago in the late 1960's. You can almost feel their joy as they splash each other in the hot sun.
“And this is the north shore, with wealthy households and girls who have most things that they want and they are having fun, with bikinis and they are splashing water and here is Ingar, looking out towards the water and she’s the only one with a white bathing cap on."
Ingar Raymond is a chubby girl. She’s about six or seven years old and Vivian Maier was her nanny. In this picture, Ingar is the only person with her back turned to the camera.
"The lightest areas in the photograph are the clouds and Ingar’s cap. And she’s almost like one of these clouds. Just floating out there in the water by herself."
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