
Found at Auction: The Unseen Photographs of a Legend that Never Was - ttuominen
http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/02/18/found-at-auction-the-unseen-photographs-of-a-legend-that-never-was/
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noonespecial
Could someone take me through how this John Maloof fellow suddenly has all of
the copyrights to these photos?

Clearly the photographer would never have sold these photos and the copyright
term would not have expired. The photos would be in the "lost or stolen"
category wouldn't they?

If anything at all, they should be (in a perfect world, I know copyright
doesn't work this way) public domain if no heir steps forward to claim them.

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p0ckets
He owns the negatives. I don't think the article discusses the copyright.

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Jun8
I was one of the early backers in the Kickstarter project, Maier's photography
is mesmerizing, although I know nothing about photographs. I don't think
they've done a very good job with handling the collection, though. Only a
handful photos are available online. The prints are few and are very
expensive. I recently bought the book and found both the print quality (all
photos had a weird sepia tone, see Amazon comments for more details:
[http://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Maier-Street-
Photographer/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Maier-Street-
Photographer/dp/1576875776)) and editorial content (no context for the photos,
just a skimpy Introduction) not very good.

Still, overall I think John Maloof has done a good job in publicizing Maier's
work.

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js2
I submitted this 2 years ago but it didn't catch:

[http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/new-street-
photogra...](http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/new-street-
photography-60-years-old/)

~~~
tiatia
Thank you!

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eatitraw
I wonder, is it possible that something like this may happen after beginning
of the internet era?

Like this. Year 2050, some guy accidentally discovers an abandoned site, which
is created in 2010. There is a blog, which sparks this future anonymous guy's
interst. The guy discovers a link to instagram on this , and then finds out
that this website was quite popular back in 2010s, but gone defunct in 2020s.
The full photo archive is available though. Curious, this guy downloads the
whole archive and encounter amazing photo collection of cats and food on this
account. The copyright law is different in 2050, so the guy decides to sell
pictures on an world-wide digital auction...

Or maybe it will be no different: a real estate agent finds a small box filled
with SD cards and then sells it on a local auction.

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Stratoscope
This is pretty confusing: "John Maloof purchased a box of never-seen, never-
developed film negatives of an unknown ‘amateur’ photographer for $380 at his
local auction house."

If they were negatives, they were developed. Was this undeveloped film? Or do
they mean "never- _printed_ negatives"? How would they know?

And the illustration above this text is a bunch of Kodak _slide boxes_ , not
negative envelopes. I never got negatives back in boxes like that. So I'm
confused about what is what here.

Nonetheless, the photos are wonderful!

~~~
wglb
The trailer notes that many of them were in film cans, undeveloped.

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tiatia
Vivian Maier seems like an extraordinaire photographer. And John Maloof
("Maloof collection") seems like an extraordinaire douchebag.

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GigabyteCoin
Those were some incredible sample photos. It would be amazing to see a larger
selection of them.

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dhimes
Interesting, but I wish the author would decide if the name is spelled Vivian
or Vivien. I also wish the author had said _why_ she was so important, as I
know nothing about photography.

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potatolicious
It's a bit of an exaggeration I think. Vivian Maier is tremendously talented
to be sure, but "quite possibly the most important street photographer of the
20th century" is a preeeetty big leap. "Top street photographer of the 20th
century" means you're going toe to toe with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert
Frank, Elliott Erwitt, Daido Moriyama, Bruce Gilden, and a slew of others.

What does separate her from your average Flickr user is her technique and her
knack for catching the Decisive Moment.

Go back and look at some of the pictures in the article. Now imagine having
taken that photo 0.2 seconds later, or earlier. How many of them would've been
as good? How many would be completely different and completely mundane?
Knowing, seeing, and capturing the Decisive Moment is very, very hard,
especially in the 50s and 60s before the advent of autofocus, auto-winding,
and auto-everything.

She's also compositionally very competent. This is something that's harder to
appreciate unless you're into photography yourself and have seen a large
amount of work. Unlike most amateur street photographers, her photos are
frequently not about the subject, but rather interesting light, textures, and
geometry, in addition to the subject matter.

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tptacek
This is a cool comment. Thanks for writing it. I wouldn't have looked as
carefully at those photos if you hadn't written it.

