8/29/2018, 6:30-8pm

Join us for our seventeenth reading and meeting of the LAAC Book Club--where LA-area archivists and friends read and discuss publications exploring all matters archives.

The group will meet on Wednesday, August 29, 2018, from 6:30-8 pm at Alcove Cafe (1929 Hillhurst Ave, Los Angeles 90027). Participants to the Book Club will be capped at 12. Please email hello@laacollective.org to reserve a spot.

We will be reading the book, Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife by Pamela Bannos.

Excerpt: The story of the Vivian Maier phenomenon has been told so many times that it can now be reduced to a few short phrases:

Her storage lockers went into arrears.
A young man named John Maloof bought a box of her negatives.
He googled her name and found that she had died a few days earlier.
He discovered the woman known today as the mysterious nanny street photographer.

But rarely is a story as simple as the filtered- down version that results from multiple retellings. Each link in the chain of the Vivian Maier story branches to reveal a much more complex and nuanced saga. Our current lack of understanding of this woman and her passion for photography stems from oversimplifications of her emergence and packaged versions of the story. Ethical issues have largely been glossed over in favor of a heroic narrative that benefits the people who have been selling her work. We are told that they have saved Vivian Maier from oblivion and have allowed us to own pieces of her legacy.

Let us know if you can’t get a copy of the book, we can help get you one.

Can’t make the meeting, but are still reading the articles? Let us know!