Last week, I stopped by the Glenbow Museum to see their newest exhibit, Vivian Maier: In Her Own Hands. The installation, besides being beautiful, was insightful into the modest life of a brilliant and largely undiscovered film photographer and the time period that made her ‘observational photos’ so moving. Vivian Maier was a nanny with a camera. Her main profession was as a children’s nanny in New York and the Chicago from the 50s to the 90s. Due to her profession and social position, and seemingly her personality as revealed through her photographs, she lived a life largely in solitary. Even with a discovered library of 120 000 photos, Maier’s story is largely untold. In fact, Vivian Maier’s story was revealed by chance in 2007, when a massive collection of photos was discovered in a Chicago auction house. One side of her was quiet and unknown, but after her library was discovered, another side to her bubbled to the surface. However, even after her plethora of her photographs and 16mm and Super 8 films were discovered, she remains an enigma.
When I was looking at the Glenbow’s collection of photographs, I was quite literally breathless. There was something so personal about Maier’s dive into street photography. Each face was recognizable and familiar, while themes of childhood internally resonate. Her delicate capturing of the everyday was seemingly destined to fade into obscurity, but by some fortunate chance, her collection and language of simplicity left a lasting impression.
Maier was born to a French mother and Austrian father in the Bronx of New York City. The census records give an incomplete picture, but at age four, Vivian Maier’s father was already out of the picture. Later records show Vivian returning to the U.S. from France in 1939 with her mother, and then again in 1951, without her mother, this time. It was in 1949, while Maier was still in France, that she began testing out her photography. Her first camera was a Kodak Brownie box camera, with one shutter speed, no focus control, and no aperture dial. In 1951, Maier returned to New York, living with a family in Southhampton as a nanny. In 1952, Vivian Maier purchased a Rolleiflex camera. In 1956, Maier left New York for the North Shore suburbs of Chicago. Another family employed her as a nanny for their three boys. They would become her closest family for the remainder of her life.
It was when she was living in Chicago that most of her film got developed. She enjoyed the luxury of a darkroom, which doubled as a bathroom. She processed prints and developed her many rolls of film. However, when Maier’s employment came to an end in the 70s, she was forced to abandon film development. Though, she would still take photos, causing rolls of undeveloped and unprinted work to collect. Around this time, Maier made the switch from black and white film to colour, using primarily a Leica IIIc. As time went on, her colour work became more and more abstract, with people slowly leaving her work and being replaced with found objects, newspaper, and graffiti. Her work showed a compulsion to save items she would find in city garbages.
Finally, in the 1980s, Maier faced financial stress and lack of stability, causing her work to again go undeveloped. It was in the late 1990’s when Vivian Maier put down her camera, keeping her belongings in a storage locker. Maier bounced from homelessness and studio apartments, which a family she used to work for helped pay. In 2007, her photographs were sold due to non payment for the storage. Vivian Maier passed away in April of 2009, leaving behind an extensive amount of photographs and films.
It was a man named John Maloof who is responsible for Vivian Maier’s photos entering the art world. Maloof paid $400 for a box in a blind auction in Chicago, hoping to find historically interesting photographs of Chicago for a book he was writing about the city’s architecture. President of the historical society on Chicago’s Northwest Side, Maloof was dedicated to revealing the area’s under-appreciated charm. His book required over 200 photos, and he had been scouring auction houses and flea markets for old photographs of Chicago. When he saw the box of photographs showing Chicago in the 1960s, he bought it without being able to properly view the contents. Maloof was initially disappointed with the negatives because they proved useless for his project.
It wasn’t until two years later when Maloof scanned the negatives on his computer that he became interested in his purchase again; he realized he had discovered a vast library of a talented street photographer. Maloof had little experience with photography, but his interest in Maier caused him to set up a darkroom and look deeper into her story. All he found was a brief obituary. Maloof was led to several families which Maier worked for as a nanny, but unfortunately, she had passed away shortly before John Maloof began his search. Maier had five storage lockers that were sold without her knowledge, and Maloof set about archiving Maier’s work and collecting the contents of these five lockers.
John Maloof has since traced many of the families Maier was employed with. Her personal life is described in various ways. The three boys Vivian Maier nannied described her as ‘Mary Poppins,’ noting her eccentric personality. With these three boys, Maier got a taste of motherhood, taking them on strawberry picking trips (which she filmed and plays in the exhibit at the Glenbow Museum), organizing plays with the children on the block, and indulging in her curiosity and free-spirited nature. Consistently though, the families agree on her solitary nature and acute obsession with taking photographs. Many of the now grown children she once nannied remember her heavy-footed walk, strong will, and enjoyment of movies, always on her own.
Maloof has since acquired 90% of Vivian Maier’s work, including her cameras, 100 8mm movies, 3 000 prints, 2 000 rolls of film and 100 000 to 150 o00 negatives. The international press quickly became infatuated with Maier’s story and mystery. She has been recognized as a great American street photographer, not only for her fascinating insight of urban America, but also because of the psychological study Maier achieved through comparison of the various people she met.
Vivian Maier’s deep exploration of the act of photography was reflective of the life she led. Maier had a particular fixation on children and the poor. Her empathy towards these groups not only came from her work as a nanny and her own experience with poverty, but it allowed her to accurately portray these people with dignity. The section of the Glenbow exhibit I was most astonished by was the portrait section. It dived in Maier’s world of self portraits and her reflection of the elderly, poor, female, and young people around her. Maier’s camera was a witness to everyday life, often taking photos in secret. The photos that Maier took of the homeless were taken with a respectful distance and secrecy. When it came to the upperclass however, Vivian Maier would purposefully bump into them to capture a negative reaction.
Vivian Maier presents these two opposites of society with extreme difference. The homeless man is shown empathetically and with a personal degree of understanding, while, the upper class woman is pictured to be prude. Maier had a keen eye for the slight differences that separated the classes of America in the mid-century, likely because her own experience with poverty and isolation made her acutely aware of the divisive nature of these dissimilarities. Vivian Maier’s colour images are her most recent work. The crossover into colour was coupled with a camera change. Her new Leica was far lighter, with an eye-level viewfinder. This change, both technically and aesthetically, strengthened the connection she had with the people she photographed. Her playfulness with colour reveals an eccentric quality to Maier’s style, especially in her colour photographs of children. Throughout all her work, children played a vital role: leading, posing, playing in a group, or staring at the camera. Vivian Maier often highlighted the bond between adults and children by photographing the two. The children she nannied for became important models, especially in her videography. Maier’s films share a similar observational quality to her photos. Her movies lack movement, staring deeply into her subjects and frequently zooming into the eyes of childhood. Maier filmed street scenes and important events, but often focused on the subtle freedom that everyday life possessed. In 1968, she made the film ‘Picking Strawberries,’ in which she films the children she nannied for in the summer time, eating fruit and laughing. The film is shockingly personal with an eery observational sense to it.
Her unique style and love for the disenfranchised culminated uniquely in her street scenes. Vivian Maier explores a variety of characters, clothes, and expressions, nodding to a realistic interpretation of mid-century New York and Chicago. Often presenting itself in the everyday mundane, Vivian Maier reveals a strong sense of individuality to every character and scene she photographed. What I find makes Vivian Maier so interesting and timeless is that her photos had no immediate purpose. Maier took photos for her enjoyment; she captured scenes for the sake of pointing out little things in everyday life. Her thought was on telling the story that the posture, face, and detail of a person begged to tell. In this way, strangers played an important part in this story telling. Another important factor in her capturing of moments was distance. Vivian Maier clearly searched for the ideal spot, in a doorway perhaps, where she would be far enough not to interfere, but close enough to be on the edge of every scene.
The Glenbow Museum’s exhibit on Vivian Maier runs until May 24, 2020, and I think it is a must see. When I saw the exhibit, it was a Tuesday near closing. It was just my friend, Nicole, and I in the museum. We went up the stairs and were greeted by a giant print of one of Vivian Maier’s many self-portraits. I immediately recognized quietness and dignity. The information given about this legendary photographer is extremely informative, but the collection of photos and film did most of the talking, in an especially silent way. The room was covered in photos of people. A diverse downtown persona was revealed in the multitude of black and white and colour photos. Portraits of couples, working woman, children at play, and Maier herself provided insight into the small details that Vivian Maier’s eye was constantly tuned into.
Vivian Maier undeniably had a powerful knack for observation. This insight into everyday life was transformative. Each photograph brings the viewer into that moment, the sounds and smells made obvious by the subtleties of the details. Vivian Maier’s world is one of fun, of freedom and childhood, of indulging in curiosity, and following the details that attract our eye everyday, which we often choose to ignore. Maier’s body of work is a lesson in holding onto the indulgent nature of childhood, the sweetness of life, the contrast of coolness in summer, and the uninhibited desires of play. Her lesson becomes even more potent when the nature of children is shown in her adult and elderly models. The painful lack of freedom is made evermore present by showing the stark differences between children and adults, but also between adults in the same space, time, and sometimes, even the same photo. Vivian Maier’s obsession with photography and preserving a sense of youthfulness made her a great nanny and an honourable capturer of the confusing climate of the mid-century. Her mission, while not necessarily verbally or specifically acknowledged, is present in her work, and remains important in the busyness that our culture has become so acquainted with. Freedom is something to be cherished and celebrated, and Vivian Maier’s photographs explore its existence, and occasionally lack thereof, in the everyday bustle of a street.
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