Interest is growing in the street photography of Vivian Maier, and a current exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center, “Finding Vivian Maier: Chicago Street Photographer,” is a chance to explore it in person, through early April 2011. To summarize from the terrific blog/website Vivian Maier – Her Discovered Work: Maier was a street photographer from the 1950s to 1990s, whose work was discovered by photographer John Maloof at an auction in Chicago where she resided most of her life. (She was a nanny to Phil Donahue, among others!) Her discovered work included over 100,000 mostly medium-format negatives, thousands of prints and countless undeveloped rolls of film. A quick link to the unfolding mystery can be found here.

.

I found the Cultural Center exhibit to be good (it includes a mix of Chicago scenes as well as a lot of New York City and global work), but was hoping it would be in the more expansive upstairs gallery. Still, great to see her getting recognition, and terrific to see which prints were selected and to see their flow and juxtaposition. A number of the pieces selected instantly made me smile, wonder, and consider my own photography and curating in a new light – just what you want an artist and an exhibit to do. (And yes, on a different scale, this is what last year’s Cartier-Bresson exhibit did for me at the Art Institute.)

.

I also wonder how many viewers might be temporarily confused, at least, by the juxtaposition of this exhibit against work by unrelated photographers in adjoining galleries. Presence of signage is a challenge for distinguishing all the work on this floor, I think. Don’t mean to overly criticize as we know the Cultural Center, and arts in the city in general, is dealing with big budget cutbacks these days. (On the plus side: the exhibit that is currently housed in the upstairs gallery is a knockout: don’t miss Violence, Women and Art. I hope to blog on that separately later.)

.

A side note: a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a documentary on her work has exceeded its goal of $20,000 and now stands at more than $81,000. (And no wonder! 300 lucky early sponsors got this great offer: “You’ll receive one of Vivian Maier’s actual film spools from a roll that has been developed. Comes with authenticity paperwork from the collection.”) Check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

.

Related:

• Follow ArtWithinReason on Twitter for updates on posts like this as well as links to items of interest for contemporary art and photographer, in Chicago and beyond.

your ads here (468x60) - after 1st post.

Wanted to share this very well done interview about my current show, by Amy Mikel for Chicagoist.com. It gives a good overview of the show, and my efforts to use art to help raise funds for children’s programs and a library in the slums of Kenya.

[Back in Chicago, finally!] So, bummer that I had to miss Art Chicago at end of April this year – was called out of town for work. Last year at the inaugural event, took in just about all I could, and absorbed a tremendous amount in such a short time. The main exhibit hall, the Intuit show, the private home tours – all excellent, just made Chicago shine. Was really looking forward to seeing how they could top it.

On the up side, however, I made the most of my time overseas, and put together my own cavalcade of contemporary art, overwhelming in its own way:

• Visited an incredible exhibit in Dubai called “Word Into Art,” sponsored by the British Museum, showcasing the beauty of Arabic lettering in every possible medium. Just stunning.
• From there made my way to Kenya for an extended stay with my day job. A life-changing series of visits to the colorful, exotic, sad and hopeful Kibera slum resulted in photography and art that will be shared at my first gallery show in Chicago in June.
• Later visited a very cool artists cooperative called the Godown, off a Nairobi side street (closeup of a work in progress is above) which also featured a stunning photo exhibit about the crisis in Kenya earlier this year.
• Next, a side trip to Egypt took me to Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery, where, despite being shuttered for most of my time on site, ended up being an artistic journey of a different sort.
• Finally, a quick visit to Lagos, Nigeria with a new client showed me artistic surprises of a different sort.

You can read about all these adventures in longer blog posts below, and/or linkable via archives at the right.Yes, would have been nice to do Art Chicago this year, but I think I had a pretty good substitute with my do-it-yourself ad hoc international tour. Along with observations from the Chicago scene (including the very cool Upset Show which just closed today at Co-Prosperity Sphere), these are the kinds of things I’ll be writing about and sharing on this blog, and showcasing as time/money/energy permits in my new within(Reason) space in Pilsen.

I hope you continue to stop by the blog (go ahead and comment!) as well as the space in Pilsen! Peace …

[Cairo] While in Africa on business with my day job, I decided I need a break, so off to Egypt I went, for some sightseeing and photography and general cultural snooping around. On the agenda: The Townhouse Gallery, a hotbed of contemporary art highly recommended by my insightful friend Alex Aubrey, aka Chicago’s very own The Polyglot.

Alas, the place was deserted when my driver eventually found the place, but the front door was open, so I poked around, only had my pocket camera but sometimes cheap works out just fine. Here you can see my Flickr album of the deserted staircase and halls of this funky, arty place – art in and of itself, albeit seen through the unforgiving light of dusk. Eventually at 6 p.m., the doors opened to one small exhibit by an Egyptian artist, which I hope to showcase here later when I have time to dig through my files and get more specific.

Meanwhile, here’s the link to the Townehouse Gallery if you want to explore – cool space that I’ll be keeping an eye on, online.

[Nairobi] Here in Kenya for an extended visit with my day job. Not a likely place, perhaps, to dive into contemporary art, but surprisingly, found some awesome stuff in a small informal collective of self-taught artists in Nairobi’s notorious Kibera slum. I was lucky enough to make friends with a Reuters photographer who took me on an intense, up-close-and-personal-and-inside tour of the place. Within 15 minutes, I felt like I was in Bartertown (from “Mad Max”) – but a colorful, awesome version. Yes, hardship exists, but glorious street graffiti lit the place up, and even the rubble from January’s violence had been festooned with pro-peace messages. I about fainted when quickly thereafter, I met the Banksy of the slums, who led a collective of artists working out of a 2-story shack.

I’ll be showing/selling a sampling of the work (think outsider/folk/self-taught/street) at my June 13 gallery opening in Chicago, “Hope in a Hard Place. Any proceeds from the show will go back to art programs for the kids in Kibera, which I’m really excited about. The kids here have nothing; to escape the place is to face impossible odds. I made several trips into Kibera and am so excited about showing my photos, along with the work of its artists, at my first show.

A few weeks later, I stumbled upon a fantastic photo exhibit at the Godown Arts Centre called “Kenya Burning.” While my show in June will highlight some of the hidden beauty of the country and its people, this exhibit deftly gathered many of the powerful news images captured during the sad and horrific post-election violence of January of this year, all in one powerful fell swoop that I had not anticipated. I had seen a few random photos here and there, online, and also reviewed some of the images published by my client, The Standard. But here, the work of Standard photographers and others was gathered in an extremely powerful narrative, showing the barbarism, the suffering, the hope of recovery. Huge bonus that I got to see it on the last day. In particular, the work of Standard photographer Boniface Mwangi and Yasuyoshi Chiba stood out as especially powerful. (Read a short story from last week’s Economist about the exhibit and its impact.)

Also at the Godown, chatted with and viewed the art of about a dozen local artists (painters and sculptors) who are working in a buzz-worthy collective that I’m eager to return to later in the year, possibly to bring back and share with Chicago. Watch this blog and the mother site later in the year, I hope, for more exciting stuff from Kenya.