Pixiq

This is an interesting story that is both inspiring and a little sad at the same time. Vivian Maier (1926-2009) supported herself throughout her lifetime as a nanny, who on her day off, indulged herself in her photography. And what an eye she had, taking photos from the 1950s to the 1990s. Shooting mostly with a Rolleiflex 2 ¼ TLR camera, she wandered the streets with an eye that separates her from a lot of wannabe street photographers. Seeing her images is uplifting and inspiring. Yet no one has seen any of her images until she was gone. She was a very private person and took photos simply for herself.

The sad part is, she’ll never know how curators and the general public will honor, admire, and revere her life’s work in photography. And that I believe she will some day be mentioned in the same way as many of the photographers she read about in the photo books she collected. Vivian’s work has been already shown in an exhibition in Norway and with an upcoming show at the Chicago Cultural Center opening January 8^th running through April 3^rd, 2011. The show at the Chicago Cultural Center came about when Lanny Silverman, the curator at the Cultural Center, was showed just 1000 of Vivian’s vast collection. Out of that initial viewing, Mr. Silverman picked 60 images for the show.

The story of how she was discovered is the stuff of novels. The story of her life is sketchy but being filled in over time. Vivian Maier was born in New York, lived in France, and came back to the US to live. Her early nanny charges, two young boys who called her a Mary Poppins presence, watched over her late in her life. She also spent a year as nanny to TV host Phil Donahue’s kids. No one ever thought anything of her photography, as she basically never showed anyone her work. But let’s skip ahead to how here work was found.

A group of her negatives were bought in an auction of the contents of a storage space that fell behind in payments. Just one case of negatives initially, were bought by real estate agent, John Maloof. Someone else could have seen they were just old negatives and tossed them. Mr. Maloof was looking for old photos of Chicago and thought he could use them in a book he was writing. After looking at the images he thought they looked darn good. And he was somewhat correct, there were not just darn good, they were amazingly good. Vivian had quiet an eye.

So Maloof started scanning and also contacted others that bought the other negatives to bring the archive up to 100,000 negatives, with about 30,000 of them, from the ‘60s and '70s, still on unprocessed rolls of film. Incredible. Maloof and his friend and now partner in the archives, Anthony Rydzon, are planning a film documentary on Vivian Maier. They now spend most of every day, processing the unprocessed rolls and scanning negatives. It’s a full time job for both of them. They also have a Kickstarter page trying to raise money for the documentary. It looks like they made their goal and is now exceeding it. Good for them. After the documentary, I see Hilary Swank playing Vivian in the Hollywood version of this story.  

The really sad part of the story for me is that when John Maloof Googled her name to get more information about her, and as he said, to maybe get some photography tips, he found out from an obituary posted two days previous, that she had just passed away.

She would never know all the work and attention that her work will bring in the coming years. 

Do take a look at the website of her work at http://www.vivianmaier.blogspot.com/ and follow the links on the site and read more about her life and her photography. The Chicago News video is a great start to get a wonderful overview and hers is a great story.

The compelling issue for me with all this is why some truly talented photographers can’t make a living with their photography and are respected and revered after their passing. Why is there not a support system and economy for such work? This case of Vivian Maier is very reminiscent of Eugene Atget and how photographer Berenice Abbott made the world aware of his wondrous and marvelous images of Paris, after he was gone. John Maloof is playing Berenice Abbott to Vivian Maier’s Eugene Atget. 

All photos shown are with permission of the Maloof/Vivian Maier Collection.