Art and Design : Finding Vivian Maier

Paradoxical, bold, mysterious, eccentric, private (words that described Vivian)

She took tones of pictures
Winter 2007 - her negatives were found in an auction by the director of this documentary
When he began to research into the woman behind the pictures he found that she went unknown to the world
The director knew these negatives were valuable but didn't know what to do with them
He contacted galleries and made a blog which included around 200 images
These images are beautiful, black and white
Street photography
The subject were of people (humanity)

The man who found her photographs wanted to piece together her work and so searched for others who had bought her negatives.

"You always want to know who is behind the work"

She had no background information that was available to the public
Eventually he did find that she had passed away
(Became famous after death)
(Artists work from the shadows)
He eventually got into contact with someone that she used to look after when they were young

"Why was someone's nanny taking all these photo's"

She was described as a loner, didn't have any family, never had a love life or children. Her photographs are amazing.

She was like a mother to the children that she looked after
She hoarded everything
Never allowed anyone to enter her room
Brought her life everywhere she went
In a locker where she kept everything she had tones of undeveloped film
There were even teeth inside of a film canister
700 colour film (undeveloped)
100,000 black and white film
He chose to try and archive everything
He tried to have MOMA help archive everything but they didn't want to help since she was a unknown female photographer, and there was just so much to go through
He decided that he would continue anyway but also make an exhibition and publish a book of her works
Her work blew up after the exhibition
She had a unique eye
She had a sense of humour and tragedy
She was prolific
Kept everything private
Tones of movies and audiotapes
Self portraits

This camera allowed her to shoot from billow but was disguised really well
Nothing like modern cameras which have to be held up against the photographers face
It allowed her to stay invisible to the people she was photographing

"Why hoard all of this work for no one to see it"

She had few friends
She loves children and they loved her
She would often take the kids that she looked after out for walks.
She did take them to some rough areas though
This job must have given her all the freedom that she needed to go out to make these photographs
She would often have the children go out and look for stuff for her to photograph whilst they went on their walks
One of the boys she looked after got into an accident with a car but instead of comforting the boy, she got her camera and took photographs (strange)
She was aware of the politics happening at the time and would often interview people about what was going off in politics

She had spent eight months traveling the world with just her camera
She lived in New York but her family was from a small village in France
Her mother also had a camera which Vivian would have used when she was younger
Further on the documentary it was revealed that she did want her photographs printed and published
She contacted a French master and offered to have her work displayed alongside his
She knew her work was special and needed to have then shown to the world
Even now her work isn't being acknowledged as art because she wasn't the one to make the physical art prints (this is something that really frustrated me because we don't see this thing happening to the male counter parts within the art world)
The majority of photographers don't print their own work so why if Vivian any different?

Art and Design