John Maloof, who directed “Finding Vivian Maier” with
Charlie Siskel, speaks of attending a Chicago auction in 2007 and buying a box
of old negatives. This eventually led him to a vast cache of photographs,
numbering more than a hundred thousand that were taken by a nanny named Vivian
Maier. Few were printed; many others were never even developed; none were shown
in public during her life. She died in 2009, and Maloof, as seen in the film, has
spent the intervening years making her work available and seeking to
reconstruct her private history. He interviews those that she had helped to
raise as children and a portrait of a reclusive woman whose traits verged on
the bizarre slowly emerges. She was memorable yet she chose to remain unknown
and there is no guarantee that she would have welcomed her posthumous fame.
From Web search and interviews with Maier’s employers and
former charges, Maloof learned that though she was born in New York in 1926,
Maier affected a ‘fake’ French accent. Then again, her mother was French and
she spent chucks of time in the Alsatian village where her mother grew up.
Maier was devoted to the children she cared for, but she could also be harsh. One
former charge reports being force-fed by Maier; others call her mean or
complain of being dragged around Chicago’s slums while she searched for
subjects. As she grew older, Maier became more secretive and if not for the
generosity of two of her former charges, she would have fallen into vagrancy
and mental illness. Nonetheless, the filmmakers portray her as a woman of
mystery, making much of her love of photography. Now Maier is a bona fide star,
admired by major photographers like Joel Meyerowitz and Mary Ellen Mark and her
work has been compared to Diane Arbus and Robert Frank. A full-time nanny who was
also an extremely talents street photographer finally gets her due in “Finding
Vivian Maier.” 3/30/14
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