The Enigma of Vivian Maier

By: Nora Underwood

When a young Chicago real estate agent named John Maloof put it in a bid for a box of negatives at a local auction house in 2007, he had no idea how much that particular lot would change his life. At the time, Maloof, then the president of the Northwest Chicago Historical Society, was on the hunt for photographs for a book he was co-authoring about his neighbourhood, Portage Park. While the negatives weren’t ultimately useful for the book, they proved to be the work of a very private Chicago woman who may well turn out to be one of the significant American street photographers of the 20th century. 

The negatives were the starting point for piecing together the intriguing story of photographer Vivian Maier, a Chicago-area nanny who had an uncanny eye for capturing on film the real-life drama of city streets. She documented the people and places she saw with her Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera, and kept her work a secret—which couldn’t have been easy, considering how prolific she was. Since he started archiving Maier’s work, Maloof has amassed more than 100,000 negatives, a few thousand prints and several hundred rolls of black-and-white and colour film. In addition, there was 9,000 feet of home movies and dozens of audiotapes of Maier interviewing people. “She was a documentary machine,” says Maloof. “She would just basically document things she thought were important historically or artistically.” 

But the realization that he was sitting on a veritable gold mine came slowly to Maloof. “I was interested in from a historical perspective,” he says. “I liked the old architecture in the city, the way it looked in the 1950s.” Maloof took his own point-and-shoot camera and started to take modern versions of Maier’s pictures. Along the way, he got hooked. “Little by little, I would scan more negatives and I would research photography masters and the history,” he says. “And I began to familiarize myself with what good work was, and understand it, and then I understood that Vivian’s work was actually good.” 

Maloof was promoting his discovery through a blog, and the widespread positive response he got to the photographs made him realize that he might be onto something, as even an untrained eye could appreciate Maier’s skill. But the first really big boost he got came when the Chicago Cultural Center expressed interest and ultimately mounted an exhibition of Maier’s photographs. “What interested me about her, more than other street photographers who come walking in the door, is that she seems to have digested the whole history of photography,” says Lanny Silverman, chief curator at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. “There’s a lot of the ghosts of many photographers, and she also has her own voice.” Silverman adds that such work does not come about by chance. “Your technical facility has to be so good that you’re not thinking about lighting and composition; all that stuff just has to come together. It could be luck, but then maybe you only get one of those shots in a lifetime as opposed to the numbers here.” As well, Maier was interested in a wide range of people—all ages and races and social strata. “I think she had a compassion for people,” says Silverman. “There’s something very confronting about Diane Arbus’ work, which occasionally comes out in Vivian Maier’s, but by and large it seems like she was able to make people more comfortable with her so that they’re not aware of her.” 

The fact that Maier was so obviously well-versed and widely influenced in her art yet so private—and possibly even oblivious to her own talent—spurred Maloof to start working like a detective to put together the clues to her life. Initial searches produced nothing, but when Maloof came across an envelope with Maier’s name on it, he searched again—and discovered Maier’s obituary in 2009, only a few days after she had died. By finding previous employers and other people who knew Maier through pieces of old mail, receipts and phone numbers she had scribbled on bits of paper, Maloof has been able to construct a sort of time line—and get a sharper picture of the type of woman Vivian Maier was. Aside from being private, Maloof says, Maier was politically knowledgeable and interested in theatre and foreign films. “She was an eccentric character,” he adds. “She would dress up in a floppy hat and a giant wool overcoat every day, just basically to not attract people to come up to her or talk to her. Perhaps it was to take pictures better... or maybe she just didn’t want to socialize.” 

Curiously, for a woman who wanted to remain anonymous and who dressed in a way to discourage social interaction, it’s interesting to note that her hobby involved sticking a camera in strangers’ faces—something she would never have allowed to be done to herself. “When we were interviewing one of the children she nannied for, she said that if you were to take a picture of [Maier], she would grab the camera and take the film out,” says Maloof. But it is these contradictions, as Silverman notes, that make the Vivian Maier story so intriguing.

Born in New York City in 1926, Maier lived in France for many years, then moved back to New York in 1951 and, finally, to Chicago in 1956. She spent much of the next 40 years working as a nanny (for American media personality Phil Donahue, among others). Maloof figures Maier took up photography around 1949. By 1951, in New York, he says, “She seems very ambitious on the streets. Maybe she was just young and energetic, but she was really aggressive and going on adventures and finding people in parades or in the parks or in handcuffs.” Several years later, she moved to Chicago and worked for 17 years as a nanny with a family with access to a darkroom. The rolls of undeveloped film must have piled up from 1971 on, Maloof says, once Maier no longer had a darkroom. “The more we find out,” he adds, “the more fascinating the story is.”

Considering that the photographs may never have seen the light of day, it will be interesting to watch as their value increases. But by how much is anyone’s guess, says Silverman. “How do you value something that is ethereal?” he says. “It’s based on the market, and the market is determined by history and by how she’s valued by curators and museums.” There’s no doubt it will rise, particularly once her photographs make it into prestigious —or celebrity—collections. “Does it stay there?” he adds. “Who knows? It depends on more of the story.” Now, more and more people are getting the opportunity to learn about this enigmatic woman. Aside from the exhibition in Chicago, there have been shows of Maier’s work in Norway, London, Munich, Hamburg and Denmark, among other places, and at least two are planned for New York and Los Angeles. Maloof is working on a documentary about Maier, and a book about her is due for publication soon. “I think the photographs speak for themselves,” he says. “She captures these moments that are very powerful, and when you see them you don’t need anyone to explain them to you. They evoke a lot of emotion. I think understanding that this could have just been in the garbage can really hits a nerve with people... and maybe they even think how many other Vivian Maiers are out there.”