I stand at quarter life quartered between the pharaoh and William Stoner. The hubris of yearning for a legacy and the indelible knowledge that even a regular life is worth living. That there is beauty in everything, daily sadness, the silence of loved ones, impossible love, and dying unknown. The pictures of Vivian Maier animate the Stoner in me. Vivian saw strangers as beautiful story-vessels, as entities full of life and mystery, worthy of the camera obscura’s temporary closure, worthy of enclosure in her Rolleiflex’s eternal photography.
From a moving bus window, she captures the profile of a woman standing in front of a branch of the New York public library. Her hair is neatly coiffed and the sun shines softly on the gel that holds it together. Her focus is impeccable, as sharp as the woman’s eyebrows, capturing the details of her jewelry, her stern glance, the tight tension of the silver pearls on her neck. Who is she?
The precision of focus is the symptom of devoted attention, the mark of a true photographer, one that adores their subject, that adores strangers, that adores you, that adores me. I see myself in the woman and I know, because of Vivian, that I am a beautiful story-vessel, waiting to be captured.
-Ruby Thelot