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Vivian Dorothy Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer whose work was discovered and recognized after her death. She took more than 150,000 photographs during her lifetime, primarily of the people and architecture of Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, although she also traveled and photographed around the world.
During her lifetime, Maier's photographs were unknown and unpublished; many of her negatives were never developed. A Chicago collector, John Maloof, acquired some of Maier's photos in 2007, while two other Chicago-based collectors, Ron Slattery and Randy Prow, also found some of Maier's prints and negatives in her boxes and suitcases around the same time. Maier's photographs were first published on the Internet in July 2008, by Slattery, but the work received little response.Slattery, Ron. (July 2008) " Story", in Big Happy Fun House. Retrieved on January 11, 2011. In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier's photographs on the image-sharing website Flickr, and the results went viral, with thousands of people expressing interest. Maier's work subsequently attracted critical acclaim, "Vivian Maier", Chicago Tonight, broadcast by WTTW, December 22, 2010. Retrieved on January 4, 2011 and since then, Maier's photographs have been exhibited around the world.
Her life and work have been the subject of books, music and documentary films, including the film Finding Vivian Maier (2013), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards.
In 1935, Vivian and her mother were living in Saint-Julien-en-Champsaur; three years later, they returned to New York. In the 1940 Census, Charles, Maria, Vivian and Charles Jr were listed as living in New York, where the father worked as a steam engineer.United States Federal Census 1940; New York, New York; Roll: T627_2653; Page: 8A; Enumeration District: 31-1242.
The families who employed her described her as very private and reported that she spent her days off walking the streets of Chicago and taking photographs, usually with a Rolleiflex camera.Houlihan, Mary (January 2, 2011). A developing picture: The story of Vivian Maier , The Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved on January 4, 2011. She would frequently take the young children in her care with her into the center of Chicago when she took her photographs. Occasionally they accompanied her to the rougher, run-down areas of Chicago, and, on one occasion, the stock yards, where there were bodies of dead sheep.
In the documentary films Finding Vivian Maier (2013) and Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Pictures / The Vivian Maier Mystery (2013), interviews with Maier's employers and their children suggest that Maier presented herself to others in multiple ways, with various accents, names, life details, and that with some children, she had been inspiring and positive, while with others she could be frightening and abusive.
John Maloof, curator of some of Maier's photographs, summarized the way the children she nannied would later describe her:
In 1959 and 1960, Maier embarked on a solo trip around the world, taking pictures in Los Angeles, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Yemen, Egypt, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Italy, France, and Switzerland. The trip was probably financed by the sale of a family farm in Saint-Julien-en-Champsaur. For a brief period in the 1970s, Maier worked as a housekeeper for talk-show host Phil Donahue. She kept her belongings at her employers'; at one residence, she had 200 boxes of materials. Most contained photographs or negatives, but Maier also collected newspapers; in at least one instance, it involved "shoulder-high piles." She also recorded audiotapes of conversations she had with people she photographed.Lane, Anthony, "Candid Camera: 'Finding Vivian Maier' and 'The French Minister,'" New Yorker, March 31, 2014, p. 80-81
Maloof had bought the largest part of Maier's work, about 30,000 negatives, because he was working on a book about the history of the Chicago neighborhood of Portage Park. Newsletter January 2009 – Number IX , Jefferson Park Historical Society. p. 2. "... we celebrated the publishing of a new book, 'Portage Park', authored by JPHS executive board members Daniel Pogorzelski and John Maloof." Maloof later bought more of Maier's photographs from another buyer at the same auction. Maloof discovered Maier's name in his boxes but was unable to discover anything about her until a Google Search led him to Maier's death notice in the Chicago Tribune in April 2009. In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier's photographs on Flickr; they became a viral phenomenon, with thousands of people expressing interest.
In early 2010, Chicago art collector Jeffrey Goldstein acquired a portion of the Maier collection from Prow, one of the original buyers. Since Goldstein's original purchase, his collection has grown to include 17,500 negatives, 2,000 prints, 30 home movies, and numerous slides. In December 2014, Goldstein sold his collection of black and white negatives to Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. Maloof, who runs the Maloof Collection, now owns around 90% of Maier's total output, including 100,000 to 150,000 negatives, more than 3,000 vintage prints, hundreds of rolls of film, home movies, audio tape interviews, and ephemera including cameras and paperwork, which he claims represents roughly 90 percent of her known work.
Since her posthumous discovery, Maier's photographs, and their discovery, have received international attention in mainstream media,Profetico, Cecilia (October 22, 2009)." Tras una subasta, encuentran 40.000 negativos escondidos en un mueble ", Clarín (Buenos Aires) in Spanish; Thorén, Line (November 9, 2009)." Hemlös fotograf slår igenom – efter sin död", Aftonbladet (Stockholm) in Swedish. Retrieved on January 4, 2011. and her work has appeared in gallery exhibitions, several books, and documentary films.
Because of the dispute, Cook County, Illinois, created an estate for Maier. In 2016, the county-administered estate reached a settlement which allowed Maloof to continue promoting Maier's work and keep an undisclosed amount of the proceedings. Goldstein refused to settle with the estate and was sued by the county for copyright infringement in 2017. As of 2018, the estate had not yet determined Maier's rightful heirs.
Maloof has said of her work: "Elderly folk congregating in Chicago's Old Polish Downtown, garishly dressed dowagers, and the urban African-American experience were all fair game for Maier's lens." Photographer Mary Ellen Mark has compared her work to that of Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, Lisette Model, and Diane Arbus. Joel Meyerowitz, also a street photographer, has said that Maier's work was "suffused with the kind of human understanding, warmth and playfulness that proves she was 'a real shooter'."
Maier's best-known photographs depict street scenes in Chicago and New York during the 1950s and 1960s. A critic in The Independent wrote that "the well-to-do shoppers of Chicago stroll and gossip in all their department-store finery before Maier, but the most arresting subjects are those people on the margins of successful, rich America in the 1950s and 1960s: the kids, the black maids, the bums flaked out on shop stoops."" Little Miss Big Shot", The Independent (November 1, 2009). Retrieved on January 4, 2011. Most of Maier's photographs are black and white, and many are casual shots of passers-by caught in transient moments "that nonetheless possess an underlying gravity and emotion".
In 1952, she purchased her first Rolleiflex camera. Over the course of her career she used Rolleiflex 3.5T, Rolleiflex 3.5F, Rolleiflex 2.8C, Rolleiflex Automat and others. She later also used a rangefinder camera, an Ihagee Exakta, a Zeiss Contarex and other SLR cameras.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, William Meyers notes that because Maier used a medium-format Rolleiflex, rather than a 35mm camera, her pictures have more detail than those of most street photographers. He writes that her work brings to mind the photographs of Harry Callahan, Garry Winogrand, and Weegee, as well as Robert Frank. He also notes that there are a high number of self-portraits in her work, "in many ingenious permutations, as if she were checking on her own identity or interpolating herself into the environment. A shadowy character, she often photographed her own shadow, possibly as a way of being there and simultaneously not quite there."
Roberta Smith, writing in The New York Times, has drawn attention to how Maier's photographs are reminiscent of many famous 20th-century photographers, and yet have an aesthetic of their own. She writes that Maier's work "may add to the history of 20th-century street photography by summing it up with an almost encyclopedic thoroughness, veering close to just about every well-known photographer you can think of, including Weegee, Robert Frank and Richard Avedon, and then sliding off in another direction. Yet they maintain a distinctive element of calm, a clarity of composition and a gentleness characterized by a lack of sudden movement or extreme emotion."
In the late 1970s, Maier stopped using her Rolleiflex. Most of her photographs taken in the 1980s and 1990s were color transparencies, taken on Ektachrome film.Cahan, Vivien Maier: Out of the Shadows, 2012, p. 262
In the 2014 to 2015 school year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Vivian Maier Scholarship Fund was established to provide opportunity to female students with need for additional financial resources. The scholarship was endowed through donations by Maloof, Siskel and Howard Greenberg, the owner of Howard Greenberg Gallery which exhibits and deals her work. Maloof used the funds received from print sales and his film Finding Vivian Maier to help create the scholarship with the intention for it to be permanent and offered on a yearly basis. With no application process, the money will be awarded to students not based on degree, enrollment year, or medium they are working within, allowing artistic freedom to the recipients. The names of recipients have not been publicly released.
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