The Life and Work of Street Photographer Vivian Maier
A LIFE IN SHADOW: The North Shore families who hired Vivian Maier as a nanny came to know a kind but eccentric woman who guarded her private life and kept a huge stash of boxes. A chance discovery after her death by a man named John Maloof has spotlighted her secret talent as a photographer and led to a growing appreciation of her vast work.
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Maier often included herself—or her shadow—in her photos. To see more of Maier's work, view the photo gallery »
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Maier's street photography
On an unremarkable day in late 2007, John Maloof, a young real-estate agent, spent some time at a local auction house, RPN Sales in Portage Park, combing through assortments of stuff—some of it junk—that had been abandoned or repossessed. A third-generation reseller, Maloof hoped to find some historical photographs for a small book about Portage Park that he was cowriting on the side. He came across a box that had been repossessed from a storage locker, and a hasty search revealed a wealth of black-and-white shots of the Loop from the 1950s and ’60s. There’s got to be something pertinent in there, he thought. So he plunked down about $400 for the box and headed home. A closer examination unearthed no scenes of Portage Park, though the box turned out to contain more than 30,000 negatives. Maloof shoved it all into his closet.
Something nagged, however—perhaps a reflex picked up from working the flea market circuit as a poor kid growing up on the West Side of Chicago. Though he knew almost nothing about photography, he eventually returned to the box and started looking through the negatives, scanning some into his computer. There was a playfulness to the moments the anonymous artist had captured: a dapper preschool boy peeking from the corner of a grimy store window; an ample rump squeezing through the wooden planks of a park bench; a man in a three-piece suit napping, supine, in the front seat of his car, his right arm masking his face from the daylight. Whoa, Maloof mused. These are really cool. Who took them?
A contact at the auction house didn’t know the photographer’s name but told Maloof that the contents of the repossessed storage locker had belonged to an elderly woman who was ill. As time passed, Maloof tracked down a handful of people who had acquired similar caches of negatives once owned by the same woman, and he bought the boxes off them. With the collection becoming expensive to maintain, this lifelong reseller did what came naturally: He cut up some of the negatives and hawked them on eBay. They proved startlingly popular—some sold for as much as $80 a pop. Maloof realized that he’d come across something special, and he determined to crack the case of the anonymous photographer.
One day in late April 2009, more than a year after he bought that first box at RPN, Maloof got a break. He found an envelope from a photo lab buried in one of the boxes. Scribbled in pencil was a name: Vivian Maier. One hit from a Google search linked to an item from the Chicago Tribune that had been posted just days before. It was the paid death notice for an 83-year-old woman: “Vivian Maier, proud native of France and Chicago resident for the last 50 years died peacefully on Monday. Second mother to John, Lane and Matthew. A free and kindred spirit who magically touched the lives of all who knew her. Always ready to give her advice, opinion or a helping hand. Movie critic and photographer extraordinaire. A truly special person who will be sorely missed but whose long and wonderful life we all celebrate and will always remember.”
After a call to the Tribune left him with a faulty address and a disconnected phone number, Maloof didn’t know where to turn. In the meantime, though, he started displaying Maier’s work on a blog, vivianmaier.com. Then, in October 2009, he linked to the blog on Flickr, the photo-sharing website, and posted a question about Maier’s pictures on a discussion board devoted to street photography: “What do I do with this stuff (other than giving it to you)?”
The discussion went viral. Suggestions poured in, and websites from around the world sent traffic to his blog. (If you Google “Vivian Maier” today, you’ll get more than 18,000 results.) Maloof recognized that this was bigger than he’d thought.
He was right about that. Since his tentative online publication of a smattering of Vivian Maier’s photographs, her work has generated a fanatical following. In the past year, her photos have appeared in newspapers in Italy, Argentina, and England. There have been exhibitions in Denmark and Norway, and a showing is scheduled to open in January at the Chicago Cultural Center. Few of the pictures had ever been seen before by anyone other than Maier herself, and Maloof has only scratched the surface of what she left behind. He estimates that he’s acquired 100,000 of her negatives, and another interested collector, Jeff Goldstein, has 12,000 more (some of them displayed at vivianmaierphotography.com). Most of Maier’s photos are black and white, and many feature unposed or casual shots of people caught in action—passing moments that nonetheless possess an underlying gravity and emotion. And Maier apparently ranged far and wide with her camera—there are negatives from Los Angeles, Egypt, Bangkok, Italy, the American Southwest. The astonishing breadth and depth of Maier’s work led Maloof to pursue two questions, as alluring in their way as her captivating photographs: Who was Vivian Maier, and what explains her extraordinary vision?
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Photography: Courtesy of the Maloof Collection
This article appears in the January 2011 issue of Chicago magazine.
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What a great synopsis of a very complex and privagte woman.
Incredible story! The photographs are a treasure. I hope I can get a chance to see the collection on display.
It's not surprising the Donohue children did not appreciate the opportunities presented them by Miss Maier. Their father comes off as either unbecomingly arrogant or a Philistine. 'Preponderance of evidence that the photos are special'? Anyone with keen eyes and appreciation of elan knows they are.
Maier's photographs are quite powerful and thought-provoking. I look forward to every new image posted on Maloof's website.
I'm so glad these have come to light and hope they will be treated with some respect, not sold off to the highest bidder. The woman had a natural raw talent, which she built on as a self-taught and obsessive picture-taker. Of course, not all of the shots are good and only a fool (such as have voiced some opinions) would expect them to be. Applying the 90% rule, I'd expect 10,000 of them to be worth looking at.
I've often thought Colin Westerbeck as a hack curator and his comments to the author prove it once again. To discount an artists work because he/she appears in the work often is absurd and quite stupid. There are countless important artists who 'participate' in their work.
For further proof of his laziness, pick up Westerbeck's book on street photography and see all the great, vital contributors to the genre he left out, ignore or simply didn't know about. An unimaginative guy its quite clear.
As to the " The greatest artists, Westerbeck says, know how to create a distance from their subjects." comment, Friedlander and Winogrand come to mind when looking at some of her work. I can appreciate that words can be bent and nuanced and often left unsaid and so Westerbeck is entitled to his opinion, but I feel it is early yet to say one way or another as to where VM will land in the pantheon of street photographers or Chicago photographers or whatever niches she joins.
I have been taken on a similar mission to John's (preserving and editing and promoting the work of photographer Gita Lenz) and so have followed VM's story very closely. All things considered, John is doing what he can and doing it industriously. It is very early to be dealing in absolute opinions. The only misstep so far that I can see is the early ebay sale of negs. Lesson learned though, I hope. And the loss of a negative or ten or what have you is not all that different from when a photographer damages or misplaces their own work so it can be forgiven even if it is regrettable.
Being open to further curatorial assistance when it is offered will be another formative crossroads in the project. I like the idea of conventional darkroom prints from the negs or, even better perhaps, the vintage prints themselves along side contemporarily produced versions. Even the lab prints or machine prints would be great to see as the scans seem very cleaned up.
What an extraordinary story. Judging from what I've seen of Vivian Maier's work online, she definitely had "the eye" -- a chemistry with the camera that gifted photographers seem to be born with. I am curious about her background. It appears that she lived in Europe during WWII and remained a loner after resettling in U.S. in the 1950s; her photos are informed by a peculiar "outsiderness".
“I never remotely thought that what she was doing would have some special artistic value.” Upon contemplating the remark of Phil Donahue's intellectually jaded son, one cannot help but imagine that 50 years from now, his father might be remembered only for his brief association with an artistic genius, one who "dragged" his spoiled progeny to monuments and made the wrong kind of peanut butter sandwiches.
Anyway, thank you, John Maloof, for your good work!
Hello,
I just happened upon this story from an email lomography magazine. I just love her pictures. They are so mysterious, intelligent, expressive,and unpretentious. I am an amateur have been experimenting with black and white photography more and more because of its honesty. This might be a rather twisted suggestion but, Oprah Winfrey does have her own T.V. channel and its pretty good about focusing sometimes on the Arts. I like what she does with this more than her talk show - shes to seems to always looking out for the new from the past. Perhaps you should approach her about a mini documentary. Seriously.
I'd watch. We are luck you saw the importance/artistry of her style.o
Can I buy one of those cameras?
"Westerbeck explains that Maier’s work lacks the level of irony and wit of some of her Chicago contemporaries, such as Harry Callahan or Yasuhiro Ishimoto, and unlike them, she herself is often a participant in the shot. The greatest artists, Westerbeck says, know how to create a distance from their subjects."
This is not a fair statement. The body of work that we are seeing, was everything she shot. Everything! It is not her carefully-chosen portfolio. Moreso, what we are seeing is John Maloof's choice, and he believes that we want to know what Vivian Maier looked like.
Here in Electrofolio we like her work so much that we contacted Maloof and Goldstein. We finally made a tribute on her honour with the Jeff Goldstein collection.
Enjoy it here:
http://vivianmaier.electrofolio.com
An exhibition of 45 of Vivian Maier photographs, from the Jeffrey Goldstein Collection of her work,
is currently on view in Los Angeles at the Stephen Cohen Gallery through November 12, 2011. A catalogue is available. www.stephencohengallery.com
i am a volunteer for Jeff Goldstein. we continue to add more galleries and information about Ms. Maier. more images are up at http://www.vivianmaierprints.com
on december 15th - another wonderful show.
info is here
http://stevenkasher.com
I am fascinated. I first read of her today in Vanity Fair magazine, then googled her to come up on this piece. What intrigues me most is that she evidently had no idea about her talent: “She really wasn’t interested in being a nanny at all,” Nancy Gensburg says. “But she didn’t know how to do anything else.” That she died days before her work was discovered to be something special is ironic and especially poignant. Makes one wonder… what is this life all about?
Stay away from Westerbeck and any other dangerous critics. The photographer & professor Jed Devine from Yale would be a much better source to consult. Vivian Maier has a very sophisticated eye for composition, light,and abstraction. She is more than just a street photographer as Atget, Walker Evans, and Bresson were. There are also many themes going on in her work & unfortunately she is not here to edit and group her portfolios. This is a fascinating story - Can't wait to see more of her work! Good luck.
“But when you consider the level of street photography....she doesn’t stand out.” ~ Colin Westerbeck
Are you serious? She had her own vision. There weren't photo books back in the 50's. She is clearly world-class - among the very best. Her self-portraits say it all - she was inserted herself into the landscape - HER landscape. She was the Ruler of her domain. She certainly doesn't need Mr.Westerbeck's approval (or anyone else's). She didn't care what anyone what thought. She loved the PURSUIT. She viewed all her work - at 1/60th of second - and that's all that mattered...