Who Was Vivian Maier?

What if you were invisible? With a curious mind... 

and a restless eye... fixing upon the snippets of daily life that play all around you? 

Would you stop and notice?  Would you see yourself there... 

captured within those fleeting moments?  

Would you hope to leave some kind of record?  To insist that you were part of it, too...

Would you see opportunities as they beckon... and give voice to your sense of whimsy...

And when you pause to reflect, would it be reassuring...

Or would you prefer to remain invisible... 

lost within the mystery of who, what, and where?

Street photography is a passion. Or perhaps an obsession. There's the thrill of the hunt. You never know what you'll find. And once you commit yourself, not just to look but to really see, it's as if you are rediscovering life itself. Everything speaks to you, awaiting your glance. I'm sure that's how it was for Vivian Maier. 

If you haven't met, I'd like to introduce you. A former nanny, she passed away in obscurity. On her days off she haunted the streets of New York and Chicago, leaving over 100,000 photos, many still undeveloped. Much of her work was rescued by John Maloof and these images came from his website. There's also a new book of her photographs, which has received excellent reviews, available here. And her work is currently on exhibit at the Chicago History Museum and reviewed here. I'd like to thank my colleague Bob Burnett for recommending her to me. Vivian Maier had an wonderful eye for the telling moment and was fearless about capturing it.  

Jean Seberg and Alicia Keys, Girls on Fire

From Goddard's Movie "Breathless"

When I saw the NYT headline for a slide show of images from "125 Years of the International Herald Tribune" I immediately thought of Actress Jean Seberg and Goddard's movie "Breathless." That frenetic film helped launch a new kind of cinema, the French New Wave, and I loved it. Here's a little flavor:

If the trailer doesn't play, click here

In the movie, Jean Seberg's character was mesmerizing: at turns funny, fanciful, quixotic and deadly. Her gig? Hawking the  Herald Tribune. And she was there in the Herald Tribune slide show too, along with Mata Hari, Marie Curie, Leon Trotsky, and "people who shook the world in an era of mass movements, mass violence and the creation of ideas that changed the way we live." 

Jean Seberg had a tortured life, but she filled that film with light. Much of the work was improvised and it had a freshness and almost documentary feel that seemed to herald a new way of telling a story.

Singer Alicia Keys was recently featured in a NYT Magazine piece talking about her creative process as she worked on the song "Girl on Fire." And while she seems self-conscious for the first part of the video, if you can get past that, it provides an interesting insight into the creative process.

If the movie doesn't play, click here

One key element of the creative process is timing. For Jean Seberg, that brief luminous moment that was the film "Breathless" captured a girl on fire. And for Alicia Keys, who knows?  Her work has sold over 30 million CDs. Even so, the next time she sits down to compose a song, she'll have to hope that the fires of inspiration that fuel her work will continue to generate light and heat.

Making a Difference

From the Creative Mornings archive

"One person can make a difference." We hear that a lot. Well, I'd like to introduce you to designer and innovator Tina Roth Eisenberg, aka SwissMiss. 

Tina's philosophy: "Don't complain, make it better." So, being put out by expensive and unwieldy design conferences, she re-imagined the whole experience as Creative Mornings: a free breakfast lecture series run by volunteers. Launched in NY, so far it's spread to 34 cities around the world. Everything happens for free: producing the event, the space, the speaker, the breakfast, the videotape archive. All volunteer driven. And because each session is videotaped, she wanted to create an evolving archive for all that creative energy.  So she went to Kickstarter, hoping to raise $35,000. Here's her campaign video:

If the video doesn't play, click here

Her goal was reached on the first day of the campaign. And Creative Mornings is thriving, with interest in expanding it to new cities. 

So how did Tina evolve from designer-for-hire to innovator and entrepreneur?  Here's an in-depth interview from a blog profiling creatives: The Great Discontent. And you can see what else she's up to on her website. So, I'd say yes, the efforts of one person can make a difference.

And what kind of difference can two people make?  If the two people are Eli Pariser, former exec. director of MoveOn and Peter Koechley, former managing director of The Onion, more than you might think. Tired of how the news has been homogenized and trivialized they longed for something else. Their solution: a mashup of Eli's political passion and Peter's sense of humor. They've dubbed it Upworthy and it flings the news they choose throughout the social network, using headlines and visuals to pique your curiosity.

 Their mission: "to make important stuff as viral as a video of some idiot surfing off his roof." The NYT calls Upworthy "serious news built for a spreadable age, with super clicky headlines and a visually oriented user interface." Here's an example of what you might find in their daily flow:

And video grabs, like this one of Bertrand Russell's message to the future:
                   

If the video doesn't play, click here

Upworthy launched in March and seems to have the right formula. According to the NYT, it's off to a faster start than the Huffington Post with 2.5 million unique visitors in just its third month. 

Finally, one other little tidbit I found that shows that the life of the mind still burns brightly. At least in Brooklyn. Check out this video from the NYT.

If the video doesn't play, click here

So here are people who'd rather light candles than curse the darkness. And I hope their efforts will inspire us, too. Because, if you just think about one thing you can do to satisfy that urge to create, innovate or show a little vision and just do it, we will all be the better for it.