self portrait, vivian maier
I HAVE BEEN A CAMERA: Vivian Maier
In 2007, James Maloof, a real estate agent, purchased a box of negatives at an auction. The material had come from a storage locker sold off when the owner stopped paying the fees. Maloof hoped to find pictures of a neighborhood he was researching. What he discovered didn’t quite meet his expectations, but upon deeper investigation proved to be a treasure: extraordinary photographs of New York/ Chicago street-life in the 1950s – canny, revelatory flashes of matrons out shopping in mink stoles, derelicts napping on doorsteps, a young African-American boy on a high-stepping horse, a debutante in a diaphanous gown drifting towards a car, a large bottom in checkered pants squashed in the slats of a park bench. Along with these were numerous self-portraits evincing the same fantasy and wit, yet eerily evasive: a face caught in a silver tray, a full- length flash in a mirror held up by a mover, a hatted shadow with legs astraddle, or simply the edge of a shadow creeping into a frame.
The photographer was a youngish woman in a drab raincoat and floppy hat, with a Rolleiflex around her neck, but there was no trace of her name. Fascinated, Maloof bought up more boxes until he had acquired 150,000 negatives. In one, he found the name Vivian Maier, unknown to Google except for a 2009 obituary in the Chicago Tribune. After tracking down the person who had placed the announcement, the puzzle began to come together.
Vivian Maier, half French but New York born, was a retiring, yet strongly opinionated woman without close ties who made her living as a nanny for affluent families in Chicago. Described by the children she cared for ( who later cared for her in her old age) as Mary Poppins –exotic, adventurous, affectionate, she once described herself as a spy. From the enormous volume of the work, it is thought that she shot a roll of film per day from 1951 till shortly before her death. She also made films and audio recordings. It is believed that she did not share her photographs with others ( However in her obituary she is remembered as a” photographer extraordinaire,” so she did show some of her work to someone). The families with whom she lived had only a vague idea of what they assumed was a hobby. Nor were they even curious, it seems, although they had noted that the professional camera around her neck was a constant accessory, that stacks of papers and prints encumbered her room. And they must have smelled the odor of developing chemicals drifting downstairs now and then.
A frequenter of the Chicago Film Institute in her mature years, she would chat with acquaintances there, but never mentioned photography. She appeared to be in costume: a vintage shirtwaist with the vintage camera around her neck. One of her friends later recalled that he used to joke that he doubted there was any film in her camera. He was among the many astonished when the photos began to appear on the internet, drawing an enormous response.
Vivian Maier died without knowing that her work was about to go viral. Hers is a story of mass appeal: a brilliant unknown photographer emerging from a storage locker, detached from any school, gallery, or artists group, working in total isolation, as she herself said, like a spy, capturing the spirit of street-life from decade to decade, alongside glimpses of her enigmatic self.
In childhood, Vivian and her mother lived with the photographer Jeanne Bertrand, a French immigrant, who in census records resulted as head of the household. Bertand died in 1957. It is not known how she influenced Vivian’s artistic development. Evidence has come to light that Vivian probably saw the exhibition of French photography held in New York in 1951 and in the following two years made the leap from a Kodak Brownie to the technologically sophisticated Rolleiflex.
Although a worldwide movement towards acceptance into the high canon of twentieth century photography is gaining momentum, major galleries and institutions are wary of letting her slip inside. The work is too derivative of Cartier-Bressons or Diane Arbus, they claim: She was an excellent student but not a master.
Maier’s story is an archetypal one of an artist’s determination and obsession. Thousands of her photos were never printed or even seen by her, except for a fleeting moment in the lens. She was, presumably, a dark horse, a nobody, who did not move in intellectual circles or seek out other artists or critics to know their opinions on how to “improve.” In this sense, her work retains a purity of personal expression and intention, “uncontaminated” by any academic or extraneous influences, a moment by moment transcription of how an artist experiences the quotidian.
Some have tried to find a parallel with the life of the Emily Dickinson, who from the isolation of her room longed to converse with the greater world. Maier instead conversed with the greats by emulating their styles, though some say she was unable to go beyond this emulation. Yet at present her work is being edited by others whose vision may not match hers, and there are thousands of negatives not yet printed. There is in some quarters, perhaps, the reluctance to accept as a major artist an obscure woman who made her living in such a humble profession. Her posthumous internet success rankles the class-conscious, the academic, and the trendy.
As I writer, I am awed by her need for purity, her freedom from the need for recognition, or from the demands of self- promotion, so important these days to a writer’s or artist’s success. So free from the need for success. She worked on her own terms, according to her own aims and standards. For her the zen of seeing was all. What would it be like to write or create art from such a fixed center? Surely a fresh point of departure.
In 2007, James Maloof, a real estate agent, purchased a box of negatives at an auction. The material had come from a storage locker sold off when the owner stopped paying the fees. Maloof hoped to find pictures of a neighborhood he was researching. What he discovered didn’t quite meet his expectations, but upon deeper investigation proved to be a treasure: extraordinary photographs of New York/ Chicago street-life in the 1950s – canny, revelatory flashes of matrons out shopping in mink stoles, derelicts napping on doorsteps, a young African-American boy on a high-stepping horse, a debutante in a diaphanous gown drifting towards a car, a large bottom in checkered pants squashed in the slats of a park bench. Along with these were numerous self-portraits evincing the same fantasy and wit, yet eerily evasive: a face caught in a silver tray, a full- length flash in a mirror held up by a mover, a hatted shadow with legs astraddle, or simply the edge of a shadow creeping into a frame.
The photographer was a youngish woman in a drab raincoat and floppy hat, with a Rolleiflex around her neck, but there was no trace of her name. Fascinated, Maloof bought up more boxes until he had acquired 150,000 negatives. In one, he found the name Vivian Maier, unknown to Google except for a 2009 obituary in the Chicago Tribune. After tracking down the person who had placed the announcement, the puzzle began to come together.
Vivian Maier, half French but New York born, was a retiring, yet strongly opinionated woman without close ties who made her living as a nanny for affluent families in Chicago. Described by the children she cared for ( who later cared for her in her old age) as Mary Poppins –exotic, adventurous, affectionate, she once described herself as a spy. From the enormous volume of the work, it is thought that she shot a roll of film per day from 1951 till shortly before her death. She also made films and audio recordings. It is believed that she did not share her photographs with others ( However in her obituary she is remembered as a” photographer extraordinaire,” so she did show some of her work to someone). The families with whom she lived had only a vague idea of what they assumed was a hobby. Nor were they even curious, it seems, although they had noted that the professional camera around her neck was a constant accessory, that stacks of papers and prints encumbered her room. And they must have smelled the odor of developing chemicals drifting downstairs now and then.
A frequenter of the Chicago Film Institute in her mature years, she would chat with acquaintances there, but never mentioned photography. She appeared to be in costume: a vintage shirtwaist with the vintage camera around her neck. One of her friends later recalled that he used to joke that he doubted there was any film in her camera. He was among the many astonished when the photos began to appear on the internet, drawing an enormous response.
Vivian Maier died without knowing that her work was about to go viral. Hers is a story of mass appeal: a brilliant unknown photographer emerging from a storage locker, detached from any school, gallery, or artists group, working in total isolation, as she herself said, like a spy, capturing the spirit of street-life from decade to decade, alongside glimpses of her enigmatic self.
In childhood, Vivian and her mother lived with the photographer Jeanne Bertrand, a French immigrant, who in census records resulted as head of the household. Bertand died in 1957. It is not known how she influenced Vivian’s artistic development. Evidence has come to light that Vivian probably saw the exhibition of French photography held in New York in 1951 and in the following two years made the leap from a Kodak Brownie to the technologically sophisticated Rolleiflex.
Although a worldwide movement towards acceptance into the high canon of twentieth century photography is gaining momentum, major galleries and institutions are wary of letting her slip inside. The work is too derivative of Cartier-Bressons or Diane Arbus, they claim: She was an excellent student but not a master.
Maier’s story is an archetypal one of an artist’s determination and obsession. Thousands of her photos were never printed or even seen by her, except for a fleeting moment in the lens. She was, presumably, a dark horse, a nobody, who did not move in intellectual circles or seek out other artists or critics to know their opinions on how to “improve.” In this sense, her work retains a purity of personal expression and intention, “uncontaminated” by any academic or extraneous influences, a moment by moment transcription of how an artist experiences the quotidian.
Some have tried to find a parallel with the life of the Emily Dickinson, who from the isolation of her room longed to converse with the greater world. Maier instead conversed with the greats by emulating their styles, though some say she was unable to go beyond this emulation. Yet at present her work is being edited by others whose vision may not match hers, and there are thousands of negatives not yet printed. There is in some quarters, perhaps, the reluctance to accept as a major artist an obscure woman who made her living in such a humble profession. Her posthumous internet success rankles the class-conscious, the academic, and the trendy.
As I writer, I am awed by her need for purity, her freedom from the need for recognition, or from the demands of self- promotion, so important these days to a writer’s or artist’s success. So free from the need for success. She worked on her own terms, according to her own aims and standards. For her the zen of seeing was all. What would it be like to write or create art from such a fixed center? Surely a fresh point of departure.