Finding Vivian Maier:
A life in obscurity

At the beginning of Finding Vivian Maier filmmaker, John Maloof introduces a group of people in individual shots who are clearly thinking about something—most probably a question asked by the filmmaker about how they would describe the woman they all knew in a single word. After a pause, the words start to come—”paradoxical,” “bold,” “mysterious,” “eccentric,” “private.”

The film is structured as a detective story, with the filmmaker trying to learn more about the mysterious woman who took the fabulous pictures the negatives of which he discovers in a box bought at an auction house in Chicago. When Maloof searches Google using the artist’s name, Vivian Maier, he finds nothing. But when he posts some of her photographs online he gets a tremendous response. And once he determines that her photographs are something special, he begins his search to find out “who was behind the work,” and simultaneously to make her work public. What emerges is a story of great drama, about a talented woman who lived a double life and died in obscurity, and about a young historian who found and loved her work, and took it as his mission to make it known to the world.

Vivian Maier left hundreds of rolls of film and thousands of negatives in a storage locker when she died. When art experts finally examine these, they realize that they are seeing the work of a singular photographic artist. But as her notoriety grew—primarily the result of a show of her work organized by Maloof—the filmmaker continues to ask himself, what drove Vivian Maier to take so many pictures and why were they never shown?

What emerges from his investigation is an enigma. The story of a woman who loved children and worked for years as a nanny and housekeeper in suburban Chicago. But someone whose secretive personal life revolved around the taking of thousands of pictures on the streets of Chicago. Pictures so stunning that they could have made Maier a celebrated street photographer if they had ever been shown.

It is her photographs (all black and white in the film), including her self-portraits, that tell us the most about Vivian Maier the street photographer. In them we see her subjects, her great eye for framing, and her own view of herself. She was tall and slender. How tall is never clear. She had short cropped black hair, and she liked to wear men’s clothes, especially shirts and boots. She said they fit better than women’s. Although she claimed to be French, she was born in New York. She used a little motorized bike to get around. And she took her camera, a twin lens Rolleiflex, everywhere she went.

How was Vivian Maier able to get such extraordinary pictures of ordinary people? She must have been a great observer of people, and her choice of a camera showed part of her genius. Maier’s boxy Rolleiflex with its viewfinder on top of the camera was the perfect street photographers tool. It allowed her to shoot from the belt line drawing less attention to herself and giving her photos a looking-up angle that conveyed a power and dignity to her subjects.

Video of the hordes of not just pictures and negatives but other memorabilia Maier kept and left behind, audio tapes and home movies she made, and the filmmaker’s interviews with adults who knew her as a nanny in the 1960’s and 70’s, reveal other aspects of her life, primarily her relationships with those for whom she worked and their views of her. Some of her former employers and charges speak of her increasing eccentricity and mention her “dark side”, while others call her a terrific person who loved children. Maier is discharged from her final job for hoarding. Late in the film, Maloof uncovers the France connection that ties her interest in photography to her mother, and we learn that she once corresponded with an editor in France about publishing some of her work.

Technically, the mixing of black and white photographs, color video and interviews, and music, along with short pieces of Maloof speaking directly to the audience works surprisingly well. But parts of her story remain unclear, contradictory or mysteriously missing. At the end of Finding Vivian Maier, the filmmaker remains dissatisfied with his ability to understand why Maier shot so many pictures but took so little interest in having them shown.

What would Vivian Maier have thought of his investigation? “She would never have let this happen,” one of her former employers says. Yet she kept so much to tell us about her life that I think we have learned all that Vivian Maier wanted us to know. Through her pictures, including her self-portraits, we see a bold and gifted street photographer. One who, as a person, was also an enigma—mysterious, private, and eccentric. Who knows what ghosts and memories she had to deal with. But even though she did not live to see her photos recognized as the art they are. She did leave us a legacy. For every time someone looks at her stunning photographs, they will once again be Finding Vivian Maier.

Nominated for Best Documentary, 2015 Academy Awards
© T. Reynolds 2015