146. Vivian Maier: Skyscraper Camera
atelier ying, nyc.
Maier is said to have made over 150,000 exposures with only a fraction of them printed. Clearly she and Gary Winogrand must have had a deep viewfinder experience as the only photographic experience took place herein, although there is a kind of a collector's instinct in the taking of a exposure in this manner. It wasn't simply a matter of the expense of printing. She worked with the joy of using the camera as archiver. For her, the image entered the camera but never left it; that was enough. The camera body is a refuge. This is why I'm making a small series of designs for her.
Maier was so private an individual that little is known about her, yet the compositions speak volumes to photographers (especially her self-portraits).
My proposed design offers a different channel to Vivian Maier the collector. It was planned in the same manner as the view camera design for the pianist Glen Gould in that the camera is meant to have a specific healing effect on its user (perhaps reconciliation is a more apt term).
The skyscraper I chose was around during her time in NY; the iconic Flatiron building, which has been the subject of many famous photographers.
A gridded series of compartments alongside this building's two bearing walls hold a custom set of Moleskine notebooks for 'Vivian Maier the Diarist'. Each notebook has its own space, much like a film frame, exposed but not printed. She has a choice of a white or black cover for each notebook. Placing a white notebook in the compartment means it's public, black means it's forever private. So the notebooks mimic b&w photographs. The first notebook is only a single page long and each notebook increases the number of pages in the following pattern of total number of pages: (1,2,2,3,3,5,6,7,8,8,10,15,20,22,25,35,40,50). Slowly Maier would get into the habit of opening up to her diaries, which are concealed behind the glass that opens like a dark slide. The camera also contains inside a living will that stipulates when the diaries would be opened, if ever. Till that time comes the diaries would be as individual art pieces each framed in its own compartment within a camera that resembles a skyscraper.
This way Maier would have a collection of diaries kind of like the plain black Mead notebooks Diane Arbus collected.
Obviously a portrait camera, this could also be slung about the shoulder with a wide pigskin strap over a coffee brown waistcoat--- a very romantic urban NYC camera.
Design, text and drawing are copyright 2013 by David Lo.
146. Vivian Maier: Skyscraper Camera
atelier ying, nyc.
Maier is said to have made over 150,000 exposures with only a fraction of them printed. Clearly she and Gary Winogrand must have had a deep viewfinder experience as the only photographic experience took place herein, although there is a kind of a collector's instinct in the taking of a exposure in this manner. It wasn't simply a matter of the expense of printing. She worked with the joy of using the camera as archiver. For her, the image entered the camera but never left it; that was enough. The camera body is a refuge. This is why I'm making a small series of designs for her.
Maier was so private an individual that little is known about her, yet the compositions speak volumes to photographers (especially her self-portraits).
My proposed design offers a different channel to Vivian Maier the collector. It was planned in the same manner as the view camera design for the pianist Glen Gould in that the camera is meant to have a specific healing effect on its user (perhaps reconciliation is a more apt term).
The skyscraper I chose was around during her time in NY; the iconic Flatiron building, which has been the subject of many famous photographers.
A gridded series of compartments alongside this building's two bearing walls hold a custom set of Moleskine notebooks for 'Vivian Maier the Diarist'. Each notebook has its own space, much like a film frame, exposed but not printed. She has a choice of a white or black cover for each notebook. Placing a white notebook in the compartment means it's public, black means it's forever private. So the notebooks mimic b&w photographs. The first notebook is only a single page long and each notebook increases the number of pages in the following pattern of total number of pages: (1,2,2,3,3,5,6,7,8,8,10,15,20,22,25,35,40,50). Slowly Maier would get into the habit of opening up to her diaries, which are concealed behind the glass that opens like a dark slide. The camera also contains inside a living will that stipulates when the diaries would be opened, if ever. Till that time comes the diaries would be as individual art pieces each framed in its own compartment within a camera that resembles a skyscraper.
This way Maier would have a collection of diaries kind of like the plain black Mead notebooks Diane Arbus collected.
Obviously a portrait camera, this could also be slung about the shoulder with a wide pigskin strap over a coffee brown waistcoat--- a very romantic urban NYC camera.
Design, text and drawing are copyright 2013 by David Lo.