(University of Chicago Press, 2017)
Available @amazon
REVIEWS:
NY Times: Vivian Maier, Through a Clearer Lens
(image: NYT Print version: Revealing a Person in Place of the Pathology)
Author interview Video at Chicago Tonight, channel 11, PBS station
@Chicago Reader: "Bannos corrects errors that were introduced in the construction of the Vivian Maier myth—some by Maier herself, but others by those who shaped her story after her death. The most significant correction is her emphatic conclusion that Maier wasn't—as she's been widely perceived—a nanny with a photography hobby, but was, less mysteriously, the reverse: a serious photographer who supported herself by working as a nanny.
That's a major conceptual reversal, and Bannos told me in a brief interview last week that it was her impetus for writing the book. "I wanted to give her agency back," she said. For years now, she added, all we've heard about Maier, and all we've seen of her photographs is, "what the men who had her work were selecting."
Windy City Times: "She and her story have been defined by the men who acquired her stuff," Bannos said. "And she had no say in the way that she's been defined or her photographs have been characterized or produced or displayed and published and sold."
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