JustArts chatted with WSRC Scholar and curator of the newly opened Vivian Maier photography exhibition, Karin Rosenthal.

JustArts: Would you tell us a bit about your career as a photographer and your experience as a Women's Studies Research Center Scholar?

Karin Rosenthal: Well, I've been a photographer since I was a little kid. I'm the third generation of women photographers in my family, and my brother and my father also did photography, I grew up surrounded by photography and photographs throughout my childhood. Early on, I was interested in portraits and street photography, and I went to museum school after Wellesley, and was doing a lot of street photography, until shortly after that, I really fell in love with nature and still waters, and most of my work since then has been taking the human and putting the human in water, using reflections, and transforming - making psychological, metaphysical pictures.

[The WSRC] is a very enriching environment, to be around so many serious scholars and people with deep commitments to their work in the arts or activism, whatever they're doing. It's incredibly stimulating, and expanding of one's sense of what's possible. I find it very motivating. It's such a privilege to have a small, intimate gallery right in the space where we work. It's very rare and was one of the first things that really impressed me when I started being there - that I could have art all around me. I live in a house full of artwork, either shows that I have of my work, or the collection that I have, and I couldn't imagine living without work. So to also have meetings and study groups and lectures surrounded by artwork is a privilege and a delight.

JA: How were you first introduced to Vivian Maier's work?

KR: I was introduced via an email with a YouTube link to a features story that was on Chicago TV, it was a ten-minute feature, and it told the story as it was known at that point, of this street photographer who was almost lost completely because all of her work was in storage lockers that were sold - actually it even happened during her lifetime - she didn't realize the storage lockers were being sold, but she had defaulted on payments, and this was in 2007, and she died in 2009. She had never shown her work to anybody, even when she lived in a house working for the daughter of a woman who was a photo editor, she never showed her pictures. She just lead this very secretive existence when she wasn't being a nanny. In every spare moment she photographed - it was a remarkable commitment to photography.

JA: Would you tell us a bit more about the decision to create an exhibition out of her work?

KR: I heard there were going to be a couple shows in New York, I knew that there were shows already in Europe, and in Chicago, and were starting to be shows around the country, and when I heard that these shows were coming up, I thought, it's strange there's nothing happening in Boston. I was on the exhibitions committee of the WSRC and could propose shows, and I started to reflect on whether it would be a good idea to show her work there. It didn't take too long before I realized it would be a perfect fit. She considered herself a feminist, she had European roots and her life was strongly affected by World War II, as is the case with so many of the scholars at the Center, and her work shows that she had deeply humanitarian sensibility, and that parallels the art activism and research at the Center. I just thought we were a perfect place to not only show her work, but to reflect upon it.

JA: Since Maier's work was only publicized after her death, do you think that viewers will respond differently to it than they would to the work of an artist who was actively showing during their lifetime?

KR: It's hard to know how people will respond. There's something about the totality of the story, not just the images, but the totality of how close they came to disappearing and never being seen. The commitment, the passion of a life, I think, touches people deeply - the passion and commitment to something somebody made, that they carried to such a high level. It's kind of a metaphor for life, in a way, and I think that in embracing her work knowing that, we embrace everybody's existence in someway. It adds a level, but also, you want to know more about what she was thinking, what would she have done if she really had taken her work all the way to the end, and finalized everything. There's some issues that come up around that: how does that effect how she will be seen in photo history, who writes photo history? Who will determine her place? There are so many questions in regard to her and I think everybody is part of the process of trying to understand this person - everybody who views her work, thinks about it, talks about it, is part of the creation of her legacy in photo history. Even though she's not alive, I think there's an active component to viewing her work, that it is in real time.

JA: Do you think that she would be happy that her work is being shown?

KR: That's a tough one! It's very hard to know, she loved seeing photographs, she obviously went to a lot of shows, she read magazine articles, she clipped newspaper, probably reviews, we think. She had endless clippings of magazines in her spaces. She loved exhibits, whether she was getting to that place herself isn't clear. There's some inkling in a John Belush film - that we won't get to see until early next year - that she might have had some intention of showing her work. We know so little about her, we're still filling in this puzzle, looking for pieces to add, and it changes what the puzzle is of. We don't have enough knowledge at this point. I don't know how much knowledge we'll have. She was very guarded and very private. But she made a recording that life is a wheel, and one person gets off and somebody else gets on. We can't know, she was a very unique human being, and very private, and intensely private about her artwork, and yet she savored everything that was out there for her to absorb about photography - she saw anybody and everybody that was making photographs, and her work reflects the fact that she just slipped in the universe of photography in a very rich and fertile period that was the post-war era. It's hard to think that somebody who enjoyed exhibitions as much as she did, or seemed to, that she wouldn't think of putting her work out. We can't think for her, though.

JA: Do you have a favorite photograph or photographs that will be in the exhibition?

KR: I haven't seen the show hanging, myself, but I did, along with Susan Eisenberg, select the images. We had something like fifty to choose from and we selected thirty-six. Actually, the one that is being raffled is one of my very favorites - that's one of the reasons we chose it to raffle, by purchasing it, we could add it into the show, actually. I just felt it was a powerful image.

There are a couple of self-portraits that are really extraordinary: the one on the invitation, and then there's another one where she's holding a mirror, and I think those are among my three favorites. There are so many strong images.
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