Pictures at an exhibition

Back in Russia after nearly six weeks in Scotland, I go to the Lumiere Brothers photographic centre in the heart of bohemian Moscow for the opening of an exhibition of interesting views of American life as taken by the reclusive American street photographer, Vivien Maier. She published few of her pictures in her life-time, but five years after her death the American Embassy has organised a display of a tiny selection of her vast body of work. It is well worth seeing.

Also worth seeing, as I discovered after the wine was finished, was the selection of pictures of Soviet Moscow in the other part of the gallery. They were just as arresting as images and, if you ignored the triumphalist Soviet ones, they seemed to me warmer and more human. There was less pathos and more evidence of a sense of humour on the part of the photographers. But, despite all that, the crowds were, to put it at its kindest, thinner...