Within minutes of seeing her photographs I would agree, her viral renown is indisputable. What impresses me most is the quietness to which she kept her work. She did it for herself – not for anyone else. And to be so brilliant about it all. Her eye is indeed one of the best I’ve seen from the time.

In case you haven’t Googled her yet, here is more of her work, page after page of such insightful imagery:
http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com

And here’s another link to fundraising for a documentary:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/800508197/finding-vivian-maier-a-feature-length-documentary

Fifty-four images by Tamra Dempsey.

As we are reminded of Steinbeck’s great stories… envision the dreams and defeats of people as shaped by the land they inhabit.

Exhibition is in the Gabilan Gallery at the National Steinbeck Center, August 6 through October 22, 2010.

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During the composition of To a God Unknown in 1930, Steinbeck wrote in his journal:

“Each figure is a population and the stones—the trees, the muscled mountains are the world—but not the world apart from man—the world and man—the one inseparable unit man and his environment. Why they should ever have been understood as being separate I do not know.”

In my school days, I was never one who could easily reiterate and tell you what a book was about, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t wholeheartedly know and understand the work and the author’s intent. I just lacked the capacity to verbalize their passion. Ironically, the past few years however have offered me the opportunity to make up for all of that.

Collected from a 20 year archive of world travels including images from A Journey Through Literary America, these selected photographs are my book report. And if I must sum it all up in words it would be this…

My hope is that you will see in these images, as in Steinbeck’s fiction, that our dreams and our defeats are largely shaped by the land we inhabit.

~ Tamra L. Dempsey

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