Feeling down? Bummed out summer’s over and school’s back in? “Just put on a happ [sic] face”, as this hilariously sweet, wittily observed photograph tells us. Laden with bathos and with a very smart use of colour and composition, this is one of a selection of lesser-known works by Vivian Maier currently on show in London, many of which are being shown in the UK for the first time. The exhibition, Vivian Maier: Colour Photographs at Huxley-Parlour Gallery is only on until tomorrow, so if you want to see the photos in the flesh as it were, best get there sharpish, Londoners. Maier’s photographic sensibility is incredibly savvy; especially considering her background: she worked as a nanny in Chicago, taking photographs in her spare time around the streets of the city and in New York. During her lifetime, she amassed more than 100,000 negatives. The works in this show span 1960 until 1984, when she had begun working in colour using a 35-millimetre camera; and like this image, such works often focused on found patterns, graffiti, newspapers and strange daily ephemera—all distilled with a keen sense of composition, colour, and above all, playfulness.
