Akris x Vivian Maier May 17 – 20, 2017
Fashion and Photography: Five-Day Exhibition of Vivian Maier’s Photographs Celebrates Akris Pre-Fall Collection’s Homage to Maier
Vivian Maier, Self-portrait, Chicago Area, June 1975 Chromogenic print; printed later
NEW YORK – Howard Greenberg Gallery will present an exhibition of more than 30 photographs by Vivian Maier from May 16-20, 2017. The five-day exhibition is in conjunction with the debut of the Akris Pre-Fall 2017 collection, which was designed as an homage to Maier. Akris Creative Director, Albert Kriemler, was inspired by the photographer, who remained unknown during her lifetime. The Akris designs include pieces with a slightly tongue-in-cheek, trompe l’oeil effect that refer to the photographer’s self-portraits and cameras. The collection will be available concurrently in store at Bergdorf Goodman and online at BG.com, and will be seen in the store’s interior and Fifth Avenue window.
The story of Vivian Maier (1926-2009) has practically become a photography legend: Maier’s previously unknown body of work came to light when it was purchased from an auction in Chicago in 2007. Born in New York City, Maier spent some of her youth in France and then worked in Chicago as a nanny and caregiver for most of her life. In her leisure, however, Maier ventured into the art of photography. Consistently taking photographs over the course of five decades, she would ultimately leave behind over 100,000 negatives. While her photographs have compelled viewers around the world since being brought to the public eye, there is much that remains unknown about the enigmatic woman behind the lens.
The exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery presents Vivian Maier’s street photography from 1950 through 1978. Maier took “self-portraits” of her shadows, one on a New York City walkway with her tote bag, revealing with an issue of Time magazine inside, and another – which inspired one of Akris’s fabrics – shows her shadow looming over bright green grass dotted with buttercups from 1975. She also shot her reflection in store windows, sometimes obscuring her face with her camera. Maier was intensely curious about people on the street and her portraits on view range from a 1954 image of the singer, actress and civil rights activist Lena Horne to a man precariously perched on the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building in New York.
About Howard Greenberg Gallery Since its inception over 30 years ago, Howard Greenberg Gallery has built a vast and ever-changing collection of some of the most important photographs in the medium. The Gallery's collection acts as a living history of photography, offering genres and styles from Pictorialism to Modernism, in addition to contemporary photography and images conceived for industry, advertising, and fashion. Howard Greenberg Gallery is located at 41 East 57th Street, Suite 1406, New York. The gallery exhibits at The ADAA Art Show, The Armory Show, The Photography Show presented by AIPAD, New York, Photo London, Art Basel, Paris Photo, and Art Basel Miami Beach. For more information, contact 212-334-0010 or [email protected] or visit www.howardgreenberg.com.
About Akris Akris is an international fashion house founded in 1922 in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Creative director Albert Kriemler designs sleek and effortless collections for a discerning global clientele of women and signature accessories including the Ai bag made of coveted Mongolian horsehair. The Swiss fashion house is renowned for its rarefied and innovative double-face, for pushing the boundaries of St. Gallen guipure embroidery and pioneering digital photo printing techniques. Since 2004, Albert Kriemler shows his collections at Paris Fashion Week. Akris has subsidiaries in Japan, the US, China and Korea and operates its own boutiques in major cities around the globe. The collections are also available in over 300 selected points of distribution worldwide.
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