New doc exposes photo-snapping nanny Vivian Maier

Via The Globe and Mail
PublishedSunday, Sep. 08 2013, 4:00 PM EDT
Last updatedMonday, Sep. 09 2013, 10:26 AM EDT


"Finding Vivian Maier represents the resumption of the quest. Not only is Maloof a major presence and voice in its 83 minutes, he’s also the film’s co-producer, co-writer and cinematographer. Poignant, not a little sad, occasionally disturbing, the documentary does a yeoman’s job filling in quite a few of the blanks in the Maier biography and, by extension, her photographic practice. Who knew she went on a solo, around-the-world trip in 1959? Or that she tried to go into the postcard business in France? Or that she could be “mean” to some of her young charges? Still, as Roy Orbison would put it, she’s very much “a mystery girl” and likely will remain that way. This is not an entirely bad state of affairs, especially for her art. The great thing about Maier initially was that she seemed to come out of nowhere to posthumously elbow her way near the top of the photographic class. All there was was the art – pure, mysterious, uncompromised by gossip, New Yorker profiles, tweets, visits by TV crews to her nursing home. What we knew is what she saw and we saw that it was good."

Finding Vivian Maier Feature Documentary Film

Via Vivian Maier Facebook Page

We are very happy to officially announce the feature documentary Finding Vivian Maier which tells the incredible true story behind the mystery of her hidden life. We are excited to share the official trailer with you for the first time. The film will be ready later this year.

 

 

"That rare case of a genuine undiscovered artist, she left behind a huge trove of pictures that rank her with the great Am...erican mid-century street photographers. The best pictures bring to life a fantastic swath of history that now needs to be rewritten to include her." - Michael Mimmelman, NY Times

Film Licensing
During the Berlin Film Festival this week Submarine has concluded presales at Berlin to SVT (Swedish TV), AVRO (Dutch TV), Swiss TV, all rights in Canada to Films We Like, and all rights in Italy to Feltrinelli Films. Further licensing deals and a domestic partner will be announced shortly. See more about this news in Variety Magazine.

The Story
Vivian Maier was a mystery even to those who knew her. A secretive nanny in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago, she died in 2009 and would have been forgotten. But John Maloof, an amateur historian, uncovered thousands of negatives at a storage locker auction and changed history. Now, Vivian Maier is hailed as one of the greatest 20th Century photographers along with Diane Arbus Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Weegee.

And that is just where the story begins. Finding Vivian Maier follows the filmmakers as they unearth Vivian's story, combing through thousands of negatives and a mountain of other material (including hundreds of hours of Super 8 film footage and audio recordings) left behind in Maier's storage lockers. As the filmmakers track down an odd collection of parents who hired her, children she cared for, store owners, movie theater operators and curious neighbors who remember her, the story that emerges goes beyond cliches of the undiscovered artist and offers a portrait that is at times bewildering and troubling. Maier's story pushes us to ask as many questions about ourselves as it does about her.

Finding Vivian Maier was Directed & Produced by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel (Bowling for Columbine, Religulous) who are Chicago natives. John once worked the swap meets and storage lockers that led to the discovery of Vivian's photographs and Charlie grew up in the North Shore neighborhoods where Vivian was a nanny. John Maloof is a filmmaker and photographer. Since the discovery of Vivian's work, he is now the chief curator of her photographs. In 2008 he established the Maloof Collection with the purpose of preserving and making publicly available the work of Vivian Maier. Jeff Garlin, an Executive Producer on the film, is a producer, writer, director and actor whose credits include Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Charles Siskel stated, "Vivian's story is as powerful as her art. We are excited to work with the very best labels to share Vivian's life and work with audiences around the world. Finding Vivian Maier, we hope, will bring her the recognition she deserves."

“I once saw her taking a picture inside a refuse can. I never remotely thought that what she was doing would have some special artistic value.”

Self Portrait, February 1955   ©Maloof Collection

Self-Portrait in a Sheet Mirror: On Vivian Maier
Via The Nation

"We can’t know the full story behind this self-portrait, or behind the many thousands of images left in a storage locker in Chicago. But we can look at the range of Maier’s work and see the tantalizing evidence of artistry and ambition, and we can look at the expression of the woman reflected in the sheet mirror and see her indisputable pleasure. This is no frumpy old bird woman looking at her own pathetic destiny. This is a woman who knows what she wants, who has chosen to do her work free of judgment and commerce, and who is in charge of the scene."  Full article here.

John Maloof: "I had absolutely no interest in photography as an art form before I found Maier's work. She sparked my obsession in photography."

Vivian Maier: Self Portrait, February 1955

 © 2012 Maloof Collection, Ltd

We start everyday reading la lettre de la Photographie. Today we discovered a comprehensive interviw with John Maloof, "the man behind Vivian Maier".

"In 2007, while seeking material for an unrelated project, John Maloof happened upon the photographic oeuvre of Vivian Maier at auction. Said Chicago auction house had acquired 10,000 rolls of her film, 20-30,000 of which were undeveloped, amongst other belongings from Maier’s neglected storage locker. Maloof’s intriguing photographic purchase would morph, unwittingly, into the kind of pivotal discovery that’s the stuff of Ali Baba’s cave: an unearthing of bounty completely undiscovered by the rest of the world.

Having no prior photography background, John Maloof was nonetheless captivated by the images he bought, to the point that it inspired him to test out street photography for himself. He stated on his blog that, when he walked the same Chicago streets that Vivian Maier had, and tried to capture what she had been able to, he “realize[d] how difficult it was to make images of her caliber.” With this realization, Maloof put Vivian Maier’s work online in order to contextualize the images within a more knowledgeable photography community. Though his impetus for making her work public was an amateur’s curiosity, the fervent reactions to Maier’s black and white photographs brought forth a tide of spellbound fans riveted by these images. Maier’s street scenes depict those authentic moments when people unsuspectingly let their guard down, and even her frontal portraits have a feeling of reveal. The subjects range from playful children to dozing elders, hardscrabble drifters to primly elegant ladies, listless young men to toiling workers: all collective participants in the rhythm of the American metropolitan landscape. " Full interview and slide show here.


Related:    Vivian Maier: Discovered

                  View the exhibition, through April 22, 2012


About La Lettre de la Photographie

Everyday People: Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier: September 28, 1959, East 108th St.,
 New York

©Maloof Collection

The Albuquerque Journal

By Adrian Gomez / Asst. Arts Editor, Reel NM
on Sun, Jan 29, 2012

Vivian Maier was essentially unknown throughout her lifetime. But that’s changing very quickly.

Maier, who worked as a nanny in Chicago, is setting the photography and art world on fire with her work in street photography that spanned more than 40 years. But she’ll never see it – which is the way she wanted it – because she died in 2009 at age 83.

“I never imagined that I would find a gem like Vivian,” says John Maloof, of the Maloof Collection based out of Chicago. “I saw her work and immediately worked on making sure she was in the right place in the history books.”

Exhibitions of Maier’s work have been held in New York, Chicago, England, Germany, Denmark and Norway. And it’s coming to Santa Fe.

The exhibit “Vivian Maier: Discovered” will run at Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe beginning Friday, Feb. 3.

Gallery owner Sidney S. Monroe says the exhibit will have approximately 35 prints, the majority of which have never been seen.

“Vivian’s story is fascinating and it keeps getting better,” he says.

Monroe says the gallery has been working to bring the show to the City Different since September and was thrilled to be one of the first venues to host the exhibition in the United States.

“This is such a huge international story, and it speaks to Vivian’s significance in the art world now,” he says. “Our goal from day one was to bring in top-flight exhibitions. It speaks to Santa Fe and it being a world-class destination for art and photography.”

In 2007, Maloof, a real estate agent and historian, purchased 30,000 negatives on a hunch from an auction house in Chicago. Buried deep in that purchase were the virtuosic street photographs taken by a reclusive nanny in Chicago.

Maloof says he bought the 30,000 prints and negatives from an auction house that had acquired the photographs from a storage locker that had been sold off when Maier was no longer able to pay her fees.

He says after buying the collection in 2007, he acquired more from another buyer at the same auction. He now owns 100,000 to 150,000 negatives, more than 3,000 vintage prints, hundreds of rolls of film, home movies, audio tape interviews, original cameras of Maier’s, documents and other items, representing roughly 90 percent of Maier’s work.

“She has become a fascinating person to me, and I wouldn’t be promoting her work if I didn’t think it was amazing,” he says.

Maloof says he had no idea of his find until he started perusing the negatives.

“I was captivated by what I saw,” he explains. “It’s really a great body of work and no one had seen it. Of course, not all the photos were great, but the ones that are stood out immediately.”

Maloof was credited with the find, and Maier’s profile as a street photographer was born and soon went viral.

“She lived her life in a private way,” he says. “I think that’s what makes it interesting. She was a normal, working-class woman who loved photography. It really could be any one of us.”

Maloof says at 25 Maier moved from France to New York, where she worked in a sweatshop. She later made her way to Chicago in 1956, where she became a nanny.

“Most of the families said Vivian was very private and spent her days off walking and shooting pictures,” he says. “I can just imagine her walking around town with a Rolleiflex around her neck, snapping pictures.”

Maier’s photographs gain interest because of the subjects. She had an eye for fashion as well as capturing the daily lives of people.

“You can see how Vivian lived through the photographs,” Maloof says. “She captured everything that seemed interesting to her.”

Maloof says three years after Maier’s death, he’s surprised at how much interest she has gotten in the past year.

“My initial goal was to get her noticed and for her to take her place in the art world,” he explains. “I know she was a private person, but I believe her photos are a gift to the world that needed to be shared.”

If you go

WHAT: “Vivian Maier: Discovered”
WHEN: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Daily;  opening reception will be held from 5-7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3. Continues through April 22
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar in Santa Fe
HOW MUCH: Free