Vivian Maier. The Self-Portrait and its Double.

Until March 16, 2023, the Santa Maria della Scala museum complex in Siena is hosting "Vivian Maier. The Self-Portrait and its Double", the exhibition that, through 93 self-portraits, tries to tell the story of the life and many faces of the mysterious American photographer. 

Vivian Maier (1926-2009) worked as a nanny, from the early 1950s and for over forty years, in New York and then in Chicago, chronicling the life and streets of the two cities, the lights and shadows, through the lenses of her cameras. 
A life spent in anonymity and a huge photographic archive discovered almost by accident only in 2007: more than 120,000 negatives, super 8 and 16mm film, various audio recordings, some photographs and hundreds of undeveloped rolls of film. 
Vivian Maier is today one of the world's most acclaimed photographers. 

In the self-portraits on display in Siena, the author uses a thousand tricks to place herself on the edge between the visible and the invisible, the recognizable and the unrecognizable. Her features are blurred, something interposes itself in front of them or sends them elsewhere, opens on an off-screen or transforms before our eyes. Her face escapes us but not the certainty of her presence at the moment the image is captured. Many shots contain a mirror (not coincidentally the title of one of the three sections of the exhibition), fragmented or projected onto other mirrors, in an endless cascade.  
Each photograph is a game of hide-and-seek. 
 

Information:

• December 16, 2022 - March 16, 2023 (the museum will be closed to the public from January 24 to 31) 
• the exhibition ticket is included with admission to the Santa Maria della Scala complex 
• reservations: tel. 0577 292614-15 - ticket@comune.siena.it
• online purchases here