Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier died at 83 in 2009. In her spare time she liked to walk the streets and take photos but she didn't really go on about it so it was basically a secret.

In 2007 an auctioneer bought a box of over 100,000 of Vivian's negatives and unprocessed films. Turns out she was 'one of greatest street photographers of her day' and never bothered to tell anyone.

Unbelievable. Amazing. Sad. Inspiring.

More old photographs...

Old images I worked on last week. These are the original scans, I like the oxidized discolouring.

Good words.

Fred Free is an American artist I came across on deviantART in 2007 and have followed ever since. He posted the following on his journal today and I found it so uplifting I'd like to share it...

"it's been 20 years since i quit my full time tedious and taxing architect job to go figure things out while wandering around europe for what seemed like forever at the time. it was about 7 weeks. i'm bringing it up (again) because the choice i made back then turned out to be a huge life-turning around move that affects everything about my world to this day. and all in a good way. so if you ever find yourself in a rut you think you're stuck in for the rest of time - a few years out of college like i was - or whenever - just do what you have to do and make your own life again. it'll most likely be worth it. [end of sermon]"


Image from Fred's deviantART page.

Images from 1960's Ireland

Amazing photos of 1960's Dublin from the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection at Indiana University (thank you Peter).

USA Mum.

At 23 as a newly qualified nurse my Mum went to live in the States and stayed there for nearly 2 years. With the help of a slide scanner we've been discovering forgotten images. These were considered 'bad photos' but I like them. Check out my Mum in reds, love it.

Himmler's Angora album.

I was joking about how ridiculous[ly cute] Angora rabbits are and googling images of them when I came across this on Wiki. Bizarre.

Angora rabbits were raised in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau to provide fur for the linings of jackets for Luftwaffe pilots.

Many of the artifacts left by Nazi Germany could be considered bizarre. But few are as chilling as a beautifully bound volume covered in woven gray wool, titled "Angora." It belonged to one of history's most ruthless men, Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS in Nazi Germany and head of its concentration camps.

Himmler's "Angora" album, which he hid in a farmhouse with his other papers near the end of World War II, tells the story of the Angora rabbit project that operated in all the Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau.

Images from Wisconsin Historical Society. Article from Wikipedia.

Stones & Señoritas

I watched Gimme Shelter at the weekend (the Maysles brothers documentary about the Rolling Stones 1969 tour, which culminated in Meredith Hunter's murder). Picture your parents’ generation; fresh faced, young, beautiful and out of their faces on mind altering drugs. Here's the Stones being moody with some attractive young ladies [click for a full view]:

Winston c. 1940

These aren't new.

I think the first one is my favourite (my grandparents on their honeymoon). In the last photo my Mum is the blonde sitting on my Granny's knee.

Isn't she lovely?

Found her on Gettys (hence the strip covering her... watermark).

Of Lisbon

Lisbon theme. Treaty. Photos. My parents are there now.
Picked these up last year at a market in Lisbon, Portugal. Beautiful ladies.