Vivian Maier stacks up next to some of the greatest photographers of our time, but she never planned on being seen. Born February 1, 1926 to a French mother and an Austrian-American father she would be remembered as never without her camera after the age of 10. Vivian’s parents separated when she was just three and in 1932 she left for her mothers native France. Influenced by Jeanne Bertrand and artist and photographer and close friend to her mother, she began to take photos around the small Haute Alps village.
In 1951, Vivian was hired as a nanny for a Southampton family. In 1956 she moved to Chicago and began to work with the Gensburg family and their three boys who would remain in her life until her death. A series of families followed and each move included her 200 boxes filled with every single piece of her life including hundreds of undeveloped film canisters.
In 2007, Jon Maloof, a young Chicago real estate investor bought a new house and wanted to write a history of the area and needed some old photos. At the auction house across the street he found a large collection of negatives and film. He placed a bid on the largest box for $380 and that was the start of a obsessive hunt. Once he began to look at the photos he was stunned by how amazing they were. He tried to find info on the photographer but she was totally unknown.
Maloof hunted down the buyers of the other boxes and purchased everything he could and found the artist's name, Vivian Maier. A google search came up with nothing but he continued to put her life together like a puzzle. In 2009 he happened to search for her online again and this time found her obituary.
Vivian worked as a nanny for more than 50 years. In her final years without any of her own family left, the Gensburg boys stepped in and took care of her. She lived a very quite life venturing between the park and her apartment until November of 2008 when a fall on the ice landed her in a care facility. The boys took care of her and also rented a storage unit for her things. On April 21, 2009 she took her last breath and finally came out of the shadows.
In 2008, a year before she died Jon Maloof began to upload her photos one by one onto Flickr and became a instant sensation. In 2009 after he found her name it led to the Gensburg boys and they told him to take whatever they didn’t keep. Her life now came together before their eyes.
The rest of the world finally discovered Vivian in 2013 when Finding Vivian Maier's documentary came out and was a hit. There was a court case against Maloof wondering if he did enough to find her heirs and a foundation in her name and a scholarship created by Maloof. Today her collection is featured in museums around the world and recently in Paris at the Musée du Luxembourg which constantly had a line to attend.
The photos in black and white are amazing and a slice of time that is long gone. Vivian had an amazing eye and her photos are some of the best I had ever seen. A few pulled you in and still have not let me go. To see more of her work visit VivianMaier.com and keep an eye on where and when you can see the images yourself.
