Vivien Maier’s photographs on exhibition in Genoa.

I managed to get a few days off this hot summer 2017. Alice (my daughter) and I went to visit Genoa and the surrounding area, places that for a thousand reasons I have never attended.

Of course, even if on vacation, I am a wedding photographer and as such I am very attracted to all that is visual art.

Luckily, the Vivien Maier exhibition was set up at this time. It just did not want to convince Alice to visit it, it was enough to tell her that she was not a photographer but a nanny with hobby for photography.

Between the 1950s and the 90s, Vivien Maier took over one hundred thousand photographs in different parts of the world without ever showing them to anyone. This figure has intrigued him a lot, especially since now we can see them and this is a great fortune.

A good photojournalist, be him street photographer, war photographer or wedding photographer, must have some talents: eye for detail, light and composition. It should also make sense of the time to take pictures at the decisive moment and must always have a positive attitude, tireless and open to others.

Vivien Maier had all these talents, even though he was not a professional photographer. Chicago, New York and France (its land of origin) were the most photographed places of her. He has been able to tell his “times” with sensibility, irony and dynamism, concentrating on the many facets of American post-war everyday life.

How did these photographs come to us? A history scholar, John Maloof, won a Chicago auction, a chunk of negative. After discovering the content and the author, he began to present Vivian Maier’s works around the world. Only thanks to this “blow of luck” today we have this immense artistic and cultural capital available …

[The photographs, in compliance with copyright, are played back for critique and discussion purposes pursuant to art. 65 paragraph 2, 70 paragraph 1 bis and 101 paragraph 1 Law 633/1941.]