April Heding's Blog: Identity: Lorna Simpson and Vivian Maier

With the onset of spring, I have found myself incredibly busy with planning for future Guildess projects, starting a new residency with Artists Working in Education, and developing art programs for the Boys & Girls Clubs. However, I have still managed to find time to learn, explore, and create.

On April 2nd, a friend and I took a trip to Chicago to attend a lecture by Lorna Simpson at the Museum of Contemporary Art and view the recently discovered work of Vivian Maier at the Chicago Cultural Center. Of Simpson's entire lecture, I particularly enjoyed her comments on identity within her new series LA-57 NY-09, which draws upon an archive of photographs from the 1950s. In this body of work, Simpson creates self portraits that mimic portraits of an unknown woman from the past. As she dresses up and poses, Simpson begins to blur the notion of historical identity by challenging our views of culture, history, and contemporary times.

My questions are: How can one emulate the identity of someone simply by viewing a photograph of them? What can we learn about someone through a series of self portraits?

This brings up an interesting connection to Vivian Maier. As an avid photographer, Maier left behind 100,000 negatives, 600 undeveloped rolls of color film, and several hundred undeveloped rolls of black and white film from the 1940s and 50s. Unlike the archive of self portraits Simpson emulates, Maier predominately photographed her surroundings on a daily basis. To this I ask, does one get a better sense of someone's identity through a collection of self portraits, or through a collection of photographs that they have taken of the world around them?

In my opinion, the latter of the two scenarios holds more truth. Although we can get a basic sense of the physical identity of an individual through countless photographs of themselves in simple settings, to actually see the world through the "eyes" of someone else is an unmistakable reflection of who they are. After viewing a small collection of Maier's work at the Chicago Cultural Center, I can imagine her being curious, compassionate, secretly humorous, and a bit reserved.