Photo-Community: Vivian Maier at Portrait Society

Last night, I had the great opportunity to visit the Portrait Society Gallery and see the current Vivian Maier show that’s on display, and to walk across the street and see a screening of “The Vivian Maier Mystery”, a BBC-produced documentary about this “folk artist” street photographer of 1950s-60s (to the 2000s) Chicago. The show looks great – the prints are beautiful and so well-done. My only complaint is that I wish there were MORE of them!

This evening was like a Gallery Night outing – basically too busy to be able to look at the art well, but a wealth of opportunity to see friends I haven’t seen in a  while! I went with my friend, Prem, and saw Trish Hundhasen, Katie Berg-Donoghue, Frank Ford, Barbara Miner, Mary and David Osmundsen, and Jessica Quist. I also made new friends with Anna, a 30-year librarian at Milwaukee Public Library, and her son, Ian. Man, there was just not enough time to talk with everyone I wanted to!

It was really a treat to see these prints, and it was so, so very nice of Ken Hanson, of Hanson-Dodge to host the screening of the documentary. Hanson-Dodge has been doing a lot of regular art and design events in their space and it is GREAT for the community! I hope they keep this up – it’s wonderful support for MKE’s creatives! Also, during the Q+A portion, after the film, it was really neat to hear one of the film’s producers mention how great it was working some local Milwaukee businesses to get the film ready for distribution in North America – very cool!