Abstract
In this visual-narrative psychobiography study we examine the life of the recently discovered street photographer Vivian Maier (1926–2009) of Austrian-French origin, who made a living as a nanny in the USA. There is limited information on her life that was possibly marked by early trauma, and no witnesses to her photographic activity. She kept her work completely private until it was accidentally discovered in an auction of stored belongings two years before her death. In our study we adopt a narrative psychology framework to look into her self-portraits, and understand how Maier constructed herself through time. Following principles of visual narrative analysis, we examined a series of published self-portraits, placing them in temporal sequence. We observed the development of one life theme (“I as photographer”), reflecting the effort to narratively construct a self that makes meaning. Over more than three decades, this life theme followed a progressive story line initially, with Vivian Maier gradually exposing her face and leaving the camera aside, but a regressive story line later, with her camera rather than her face gaining central position and with both of them disappearing eventually. We discuss the findings with emphasis placed in the many forms of repeated self-portrayal as meaning making, but also in the limitations of making meaning of the self in solitude.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
—Louise Glück, Nostos, Meadowlands, 1996
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Androutsopoulou, A., Tsatsaroni, C., Koutsavgousti, G., Thanopoulou, K. (2021). “I as Photographer”: A Visual Narrative Analysis of Vivian Maier’s Self-Portraits. In: Mayer, CH., Fouché, P.J., Van Niekerk, R. (eds) Psychobiographical Illustrations on Meaning and Identity in Sociocultural Contexts . Sociocultural Psychology of the Lifecourse . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81238-6_6
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