my Senior thesis

Vivian Maier has been an inspiration for my photography ever since I first heard her story. Her breathtaking photographs paired with her tragic story captivated me, and I was left needing to know more. This lead me to research and write about Vivian Maier for my senior thesis, which received high honors, entitled “The Nanny’s Story She Never Told”. I hope you enjoy reading and learning about Vivian Maier’s story as much as I have!

The Nanny’s story she never told…

A lone, harsh nanny is not a person that one might think would be the subject of talk or attention, because what is there to talk about when it comes to a woman who has no friends, no family, no hobbies, no anything? This woman was Vivian Maier. A reclusive nanny from Chicago, Vivian spent her life hopping from family to family, no real home or family of her own, simply fading in and out of other people’s lives. Now the question comes back to mind, why is she the subject of talk and attention if she seemingly had such little impact on those around her? Maier had a somewhat secret passion, photography. It was only somewhat a secret as Maier was never seen without her Rolleiflex camera. She was snapping photos everywhere she went. There was even a time where one of her kids got hit by a car, and instead of doing much to help, she just ran over to take photos of the child laying in the street. The puzzling part to those around her was that they never saw a single photo she had ever taken. It was not until after Maier had passed away that any of her photographs were able to be attributed to her. Her story, one of an amazing artist being unknown her whole life, began catching people’s attention across the world. The way she rose to fame begs the question, are her photographs actually worth the praise, or is it her story that enthralls people? 

This narrative of Maier being a reclusive, secretive nanny starts to make more sense when one begins to understand how she grew up. This seclusion comes from the fact that she had never quite belonged anywhere: to her age group, to a place or a home, or even to her family. Everywhere Maier went, she was different from everyone else; she never really “fit in” anywhere, even into her own parents' lives. Less than a year after she was born in New York City, her “parents’ marriage collapsed amid accusations of abuse and abandonment” (Bannos, 28). Vivian’s mother, Marie Jaussaud, was awarded custody of Vivian, and the two moved in with an older woman by the name of Jeanne Bertrand. In her prime, Jeanne Bertrand was a popular French photographer who was roughly the same age as Vivian’s grandmother, Eugenie Jaussaud, and even lived in the same area as her. It is suspected that Eugenie set up the living arrangements between Jeanne, and Marie and Vivian.

While living with Jeanne, Marie was trying to find a job, so Vivian was left with Jeanne most of the time. One can only begin to wonder what young Vivian had learned about photography from Bertrand. She was only four years-old, but is it possible that Bertrand introduced Vivian to photography? It appears that Bertrand was much more influential in Vivian’s life than by possibly being her introduction to photography. Bertrand’s photography career had been in decline at this point, newspapers had stopped writing about her and her work, and instead had started reporting about Bertrand’s mental health issues. One Massachusetts paper in June of 1917, almost two decades before Vivian entered her life, reported that she “tried to kill two nieces early yesterday morning at her apartment… It was found that Miss Bertrand had gone violently insane. The authorities had difficulty in securing her” (Bannos, 29). Bertrand’s violent streak is one that can be seen in Maier. Yes, Maier was a nanny, but as one of the children she nannied said, “she had a dark side,” (Finding Vivian Maier, min. 56). Perhaps this dark side, one of violence, came from Bertrand, as she was like a nanny figure to Maier, being there to take care of her when her mother was not. Maier’s example of parenting came from Bertrand, which is why Maier’s later outbursts somewhat mirror Bertrand’s.

One of these outbursts involved Maier lashing out at one of her children and grabbing her by the wrists, swinging her around, and smashing her into things around the house. One could say that Maier tried to kill her, just like how Bertrand “tried to kill” her two nieces. It did not just stop there, as there are other accounts from the children Maier nannied about her “dark side”. Like in one instance, Maier got upset with one of her children for not eating her food, so Maier grabbed her face, and began forcefully feeding her. Looking back on Bertrand’s incidents like this that were being reported in the papers, it is very interesting how, “her story both foreshadows and shadows aspects of Vivian Maier’s” (Bannos, 18). Not only did Bertrand’s story mirror Maier, each of them grew to have a passion for photography, and even got recognition for this passion. Although Bertrand’s recognition came during her life, whereas Maier’s came after. Both of them also originated from the same valley in France, the Champsaur Valley, a place where a young Vivian was just about to return to.

In 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, Marie and a young Vivian Maier left New York to return to a place where Marie Maier had once called home: the Champsaur Valley. When they arrived, Vivian, yet again, did not seem to fit in. Having been born and raised in the United States, Vivian spoke English, which “struck villagers as a visitor from El Dorado, the legendary place of wealth and abundance” (Bannos, 31). It was not just the villagers with whom Maier did not “fit in” with. Due to her mother being illegitimate, Marie legally had no family rights in France. This meant that after the death of her grandfather, Marie was not able to gain any of the benefits from the sale of his property, or even own any of this land herself. However, if Marie was able to get her father to recognize her as his child, she would be able to claim inheritance rights. So on August 12th, 1932, Marie’s father, Nicolas Baille, legally acknowledged his paternity of Marie Maier, now making her, legally, “Maria Baille.” Needless to say, Nicolas Baille was not a strong male presence in Vivian Maier’s life; if anything, his lack of acknowledging his paternity of her mother led to Nicolas being another disappointing male figure in her life.

Maier’s lack of positive male role models in her life could explain her lack of a male partner throughout her life. When she arrived in France, she realized that “Marie Maier’s maternal family members--all unmarried--each held land in their own names” (Bannos, 32). These women could have been an inspiration for her, as they all directly foreshadow Maier’s life a few years down the road when she inherits and owns a large amount of land as an unmarried woman. Although one cannot solely blame Nicolas Baille for Maier’s clear fear and hatred towards men, for he was not even the first man in her life to let her down, as This “fear” lasted well into her adulthood. One of her children recalled, “she had this anger in her towards men” (Finding Vivian Maier, min. 56). Yet this fear had to have originated well before that. Shortly after her birth, Maier’s “parent’s marriage collapsed amid accusations of abuse and abandonment” (Bannos, 28). Maier had witnessed the impacts of her father’s abuse on her mother, even after they split up, and it had to have impacted her as well.

Although it might have appeared as though it was just Vivian and her mother against the world after her mother and father split, her father’s side of the family still played into this narrative. Vivian was not the first to witness problems in her parents' relationship. Vivian’s brother Karl, who is six years older than her, was put into a children’s home due to the faltering state of his parents' marriage. Eventually, Karl was placed into the custody of his paternal grandparents because he “was born into a home where constant conflict was presented between his parents'' (Bannos, 26). When Vivian came into the picture, Karl had already been removed from the picture. When Vivian moved to France with her mother, she was the one removed from the picture, rather literally. As she was living in France, her paternal grandfather had passed away. His obituary was in the New York Times the next day reading, “dearly beloved husband of Marie von Maier, devoted father of Mrs. Alma C. Cosan and Charles von Maier, and grandfather of Charles von Maier Jr.” (Bannos, 37). Vivian was merely forgotten, even amongst her own family. She had gotten used to being invisible from a very young age.

In the way that her parents fighting impacted her, it is clear that their parents fighting impacted Karl, as he caused trouble both in and out of school, and was in and out of jail. His first arrest in 1936 was for forging a check and tampering with U.S. mail, and he was sentenced to three years in a New York State Vocational Institution. When they were filling out his entry documents upon his arrival, he was asked about his family and whether he had any siblings. His response was that he “has a sister living with mother in France, she is about 10 years old. Does not know her name” (Bannos, 38).  Vivian was invisible yet again, as her own brother did not even remember her name. While he did not remember her, she could not help but to remember him, as her mother was doing everything she possibly could to try to help Karl in this time of struggle, even while she was in France.

Almost everyone’s focus in Maier’s family was on helping Karl figure everything out. His grandmother blamed “his father, whom she also characterized as a drunk, a gambler, and a liar” for poorly influencing Karl (Bannos, 38).  Meanwhile, Karl’s father claimed his grandmother spoiled him, and that this behavior was the cause of his actions. Whether who was right or wrong, it is still evident that Charles Maier did not have a positive impact on anyone. Karl’s actions are almost exact reactions to Charles’ actions, as the first time that Karl ran away was only a few days after his father “effectively accomplished a ‘poor man’s divorce’ by abandoning his children and his first wife, he married forty-year-old Bertha Ruther” (Bannos, 38). This was the example that Charles set for Karl; that he can up and leave any situation at any time if he does not think that it is working out for him, and that’s exactly what he did. When Marie and Vivian returned to New York from France, Marie insisted that Karl live with them when he got out of jail. Reluctantly, Karl ended up living with them, but it was not long until he tried to run away from this situation too.

It was October 13th, 1938, when “Karl moved in with his mother and young sister” (Bannos, 44). Starting before they even left France, Vivian’s mother’s priorities were with Karl, and not with Vivian. As she was just twelve years old, she was at a point in her life where she needs the attention of her mother and her family, however, she did not get this much needed attention as Karl’s needs were constantly being put before hers. All of this attention and energy being used on Karl was actually being wasted, as he wrote to a friend, “I don’t want anything to do with my people no more the more I’ve listened to them the more trouble I’ve gotten into” (Bannos, 44). Vivian had to just sit and watch as there was constant turmoil in her home, and none of it was for her; yet again, she was overlooked.

This was something she had to have been used to at this time, having her needs come second to everyone else’s. At the age of twelve, Vivian had just learned the history and language of France, a place in which she was just about to abandon to return to New York, which is a place that she had once called home that is now so foreign to her. She had no idea the turmoil she was about to enter when she arrived in New York. Her eventful trip from France to New York was to be an indicator of the turmoil she would experience when she arrived. Among the numerous high profile people on board, there was another person who made headlines on the SS Normandie: a simple professor. His actions were nothing but simple, as one headline read, “Professor Jumps Off Normandie after Attempt to Choke His Wife” (Bannos, 41). Not only was this a commotion while on the boat, but as photojournalism, especially tabloid photojournalism, was reaching its stride, it made the headlines of the papers when Maier arrived in New York, so she could relive the excitement of that moment over, and over again.

It was a known fact that Vivian Maier tended to be fascinated with the gore of life, things that no one else wanted to hear about because of how dehumanizing they were, like the incident on the SS Normandie. Which then just begs the question, was this incident the spark of fascination for Maier when it came to gory events? It very well may have been, as her love for the underbelly of society began to grow further. She first began exploring this darker side of society when she arrived back in New York. Vivian and her mother were staying at a hotel before they moved into their apartment, where Karl would join them. While at the hotel, Vivian “was allowed to explore the neighborhood on her own, she could have walked east from the hotel directly into the southwestern entrance of Central Park” (Bannos, 42). Being left to roam the streets of New York alone exposed twelve-year-old Vivian to the rejects of society, finally a space where she felt she belonged. Wandering the streets of the city alone is something that she would continue  well into adulthood, when she got time off at night as a nanny.

At first, it might be surprising that Maier was a nanny, as she never really showed any sort of inclination towards children. However, being a nanny gave Maier a unique opportunity in her life to maintain her freedom while still working. In this transition to being a nanny, Maier had ended up living in Chicago. Being a nanny allowed for her to be out in the sun everyday, and do something new everyday. She was able to do what she wanted, and did not have to worry about paying rent or making sure she had food because her employers would supply her with a room of her own, and ensure she was fed. Then whenever she was not watching the children, she was able to do what she wanted, which included wandering around the streets of Chicago at night, by herself, taking photos of what she saw. She was not just taking photos at night, however, when no one was around, “she always had her camera around her neck” one of her children recalls (Finding Vivian Maier, min. 17). Her children were some of her favorite subjects to photograph, as children have this sense of innocence, which heavily contrasted the photographs she took whilst wandering the Chicago streets at night.

Another reason Maier might have become a nanny was so she could be to these children what she never had, which is someone to care about them when their parents cannot, or won’t. Maier saw how much trouble children caused in the lives of those around her, so she did not want to bring that turmoil into her own life. She does, however, understand the impact that being overlooked as a child can have on a person, and she did not want these children to have to experience that as well. One of her children put it so perfectly by simply saying, “she was like our mother” (Finding Vivian Maier, min. 6). She was almost better than their own mothers because she did not have anything else to worry about besides the children, so they got her undivided attention, except for when there was a photograph to be taken. Maier had the time to take the kids wherever they wanted to go, and quite simply, “life was more adventurous with her around” (Finding Vivian Maier, 25:00). Whether these adventures were going into the forest to pick some strawberries, or heading into the city to see what lurks behind each corner, there was always something new with Vivian.

Maier was, “an incredibly watchful, observant, caring person, and probably why she was a nanny, was that she had those capacities” (Finding Vivian Maier, 1:16:00). These traits don’t only make her suitable to be a nanny, but these are the characteristics that make up an amazing street photographer. Being observant and watchful is important when it comes to being a nanny because one has to keep an eye on the children at all times to make sure they are safe and not in harm’s way, however being watchful and observant is also a key trait of being a photographer, specifically a street photographer, like she was. One needs to be observant and aware of their surroundings to pick up on the smallest moments that, when captured, tell a whole story. Being a caring person is obviously a vital trait to have as a nanny, as that is what the job is, caring for children. As a photographer though, one might not consider caring to be a needed trait, but this could not be more wrong. A photographer needs to be caring with their subject in order to create a tender moment, a moment which will evoke the most emotion out of the viewer. Without a caring eye, these photographs that make one feel something so deeply would quite simply not exist, or at least they would not evoke the same emotion out of the viewer.

These characteristics that are needed to be a nanny are all a part of her work, her work is to be caring, observant, intrusive while remaining an outsider, and maintains a level of understanding. The camera she used, which was a Rolleiflex, also contributed to this. The Rolleiflex camera is a twin lens reflex camera and one would hang the camera around their neck and look down at it to take the shot. This allowed for Maier to come into people’s personal space without making them think twice about it, as she was not holding a camera in their face. Having the camera at chest level made her adult subjects appear as though they were towering over her, and it allowed for her to get right at eye level with her children subjects. It also allows her to take pictures without having to make eye contact with her subject. Maier’s ability to be invisible to those around her, that she picked up throughout her childhood, helped her remain invisible to her subject, allowing her to invade their personal space.

However the Rolleiflex was not always the camera she used. She first took up photography when she returned to the Champsaur Valley in 1950, and she used a different camera then. Some think that the Kodak Brownie Box camera found along with her possessions is the culprit for these early works in the Champsaur Valley, although it is still up for debate. These early photographs of Maier’s show an immense attention to detail as she would experiment with different settings on the camera to see how that would impact the photograph. She would fidget with all of the settings, “one example shows how using lens filtering in different ways from frame to frame darkens the clear sky” (Bannos, 61). It is believed that Maier was entirely self-taught, having never found or heard of any records of her attending classes. Although, just because she was self-taught does not mean that she was disconnected from the world of photography at the time. Maier exposed herself to the world of photography, having seen a few exhibitions here and there, however, she never exposed the world of photography to herself.

Despite keeping herself hidden from the photography world, she continued to grow her skills and techniques. Soon enough, there was never a moment where Maier was seen without her camera. One of her strongest attributes of her work is her ability to capture the smaller moments in life, the ones that the majority of people overlook. She photographed moments such as, “adults and children posing with dogs, kittens, lambs, piglets, and, in a subject she was drawn to throughout her life, babies in their mother’s arms” (Bannos, 65). She felt so drawn to photograph children, especially those with their mothers, because it is something that she yearned for, something that she never received. Being a nanny, children also were always around her, making them a very common subject. Children have a sense of innocence and they have such raw emotions that they make for a beautiful subject, one that can really pull the viewer in and push them to those states of raw emotions.

These raw emotions can be seen in one of the photos Maier took when she was in Grenoble, France, in 1959. This photograph depicts a child who looks directly into the camera, as the camera is down at her eye level, and has tears flooding her eyes as she cries out loud. As a viewer, one can almost hear her cry breaking through the photograph. She is standing next to, who is assumed to be, her mother, whose head is cut out of the frame. Even though we cannot see her face, it appears as though she does not have much of a care for her daughter's outburst. This might be why Maier was so drawn to her, she was a child whose needs and feelings went completely unnoticed by those who were supposed to care for her.

This isn’t the only child who Maier photographed that was ignored by those around them. One of the children that Maier was nannying was playing outside one day, when a car came by and hit him, knocking him to the ground. His nanny, “instead of helping him, photographed the accident and the resulting commotion” (Merriman and Seeder). Maier was not one to let a photographable moment pass her by, not even when it was at the expense of someone else, someone she’s supposed to care for. She was willing to do whatever it took in order for her to get the shot, even if that included letting her children pay the price at times. What’s confusing about this however, is that she would risk a lot of things in order to get the perfect shot, only for no one to see, not even herself, as a lot of her photographs were found on undeveloped rolls of film. Some of these photographs contain images of animals at the slaughterhouse, some were dead. This was not a journey that she took by herself, she would bring the children she watched along with her. In one girl’s account, “that was the first time [she] saw death” (Finding Vivian Maier, 1:11:00). Maier probably did not think much of bringing a young child around death like this because she had been interested in the gore of life since she was a rather young child. There was no subject off limits when it came to Maier’s photography.

She always had a way of making her photographs of the mundane feel extravagant, her gory photographs feel comforting in a way, and her photographs of the misfits of society feel like they belong. Part of this was due to her ability to remain invisible to those around her, therefore capturing their natural state. She felt as though she did not belong in this society either, so it was easy for her to relate and understand her fellow misfits and portray this understanding in a way that many others could not. Maier also had a way of understanding her camera, and photography in general. She knew what would make a good photograph, what moments, what compositions, what lighting, and more importantly, where to be. She takes after Henri Cartier-Bresson in this aspect, of knowing exactly what moment to capture. Maier and Cartier-Bresson have more than just this in common, they are both French photographers who had an interest in capturing, “people in a flash, in a private or telling moment, rather than how they might formally present themselves” (Erwitt). They both possess this quality of the “decisive moment”, being that they know when exactly to click the shutter and capture the perfect moment of the world in its normal state around them. Sharing a similar understanding and view of the world around them leads to a few similar photographs here and there.

The subject of two of these similar photographs is a sleeping street vendor. Most people would see a street vendor asleep and just move on, maybe hoping that no one will steal their stuff while they’re asleep. But Maier and Cartier-Bresson both stopped at the sight of this, and were intrigued with what they saw, enough to snap a photo of it. Maier’s photograph, taken in 1954 in New York, NY, has a rather symmetrical composition of a newsstand, with newspapers surrounding the window in the middle. The composition of this shot allows for there to be a frame within the square frame of the photograph, this added frame being the window that the vendor is leaning into. This additional frame allows for Maier to direct the viewer’s eye where she wants it to go, which in this case is right to the sleeping vendor. The LIFE magazines right below the window appear to be reminders to the viewer that this is what life is, it is not the romantic portrayals that other artists try to depict; life, and art, consists of real people doing everyday things, like sleeping, or working, or both at the same time.

Cartier-Bresson’s photograph also focuses on the realities of life, like sleeping and working. Barrio Chino, Barcelona, Spain, is a vertical composition, where the sleeping vendor appears at the bottom. To the left of him appears to be the fruit that he is selling, and above him appears to be a quick scribbled portrait that someone had drawn of him while he was laying there asleep. For Cartier-Bresson, this portrait in the background just emphasized his view that this sleeping man is art, for this meant that someone else had recognized it too. This photograph really makes the viewer ask themselves what they view as art. This was a sight that the viewer had seen many times before, however seeing it as a photograph, as a piece of art, made them truly reevaluate what they believed to be art, and opened their eyes to the art that surrounds them every single day.

A lot of this art and beauty that surrounds people is often overlooked, as it is viewed as “weird”, “not normal”, or that it “does not belong”. Not only did Maier challenge this narrative, along with Cartier-Bresson, but another photographer, by the name of Diane Arbus, did as well. Her work from the 50s up to her death in 1971, like Maier, showed the underbelly of society. She was “a humanist who was normalizing the marginalized” (Eamonn). Her work strived to skew what the viewer’s perception of their society was, by photographing the “misfits'' of society as socialite trendsetters, and photographing the posh upper class in a way that makes them look like they’re the grotesque ones who don’t belong. Like Maier, Arbus also gravitated towards children as the subjects of her photos. One of Arbus’s most famous photographs, Identical Twins, depicts two identical twin girls, dressed in the exact same outfit as they stand right next to each other. The main idea in this photograph is to highlight the “differentness in identicalness” (Malkovich, Miller, and Kubrick). When someone sees two things that are identical, they don’t really look much farther past them being identical, Arbus is challenging this idea by giving the viewer the time to look at these twins, and begin to notice their differences.

Differences within the similar are a bit easier to notice in Maier’s photograph of two boys legs from behind. This photograph depicts the legs of two boys on either side of the frame, with the boy on the right being a bit shorter than the boy on the left. The boy on the right’s legs are also much skinnier than the other boy’s, but they are both skinny enough that their knees protrude out from the rest of their legs. The composition of this photo is very similar to that of Identical Twins, having two very similar, almost identical, subjects set up right next to each other in the frame. The longer one looks, the more differences they begin to notice that they did not catch at first glance. Like the birthmark that the right boy has on his leg, or that they are wearing different colored socks, or that we can see the right boy’s hand hanging down by his side. Like Arbus, who had previous experience and training as a photographer, Maier understands the composition of a photograph and how to direct the viewer’s eye exactly where she wants it.

Just because Maier’s work is comparable to that of Cartier-Bresson and Arbus, does not mean that her work is any less unique, it means that her work is up there with some of the greats of photography. One of her photographs shows a man doing a headstand next to a woman who appears to be preoccupied with her shoe in her hands. They are standing in front of a sign for “Striporama”, which has promiscuously posed women on it, with a man in the bottom corner smiling big. This photograph has techniques and traits of both Cartier-Bresson’s and Arbus’s work. Maier’s use of the decisive moment in this shot is impeccable. She is able to capture this man in an incredible moment, and preserve his facial expression that he may have only had for a split second. The man, paired with the shoeless woman, is an unexpected duo that one might not normally come across, or at least not that they notice. This is a prime example of where her and Arbus’s styles overlap. Maier captured two people that generally, others would just completely overlook. She is shining a light on the side of society that is generally kept in the shadows.

This photograph shows just how clever Maier’s photographic eye is. This “Striporama” is described as, “in gorgeous color!”, which contrasts Maier’s use of black and white film. Whether this was something she noticed consciously or subconsciously, it is a clever detail that makes the mark of a true photographer. There are so many other minute details at play in this photograph that take it from an ordinary photograph, to an extraordinary photograph. One being the woman without her shoe on, standing right next to a poster for a strip show. This ironic play on stripping off your clothes pertaining to a woman taking her shoe off is not one to be overlooked. The man’s body positioning mimics that of the lady on the poster behind him. He has his legs up in the air, with his pants falling downwards to reveal more of his leg, while the woman behind him has her legs up in the air, fully exposing her legs. The man’s face is that of complete ecstasy, most likely due to noticing he’s getting his picture taken, meanwhile the woman behind him’s face is also one of ecstasy, but for a different reason entirely. The way that Maier is able to make these connections within the frame, and in her mind, in a matter of seconds, just proves how trained her eye is for picking up on artistic details, without ever having been properly trained.

Maier could pick up on these details, not because she was trained as a photographer, but because of her real day job; being a nanny. As a nanny, one has to be able to recognize the smallest details around them in order to keep the children they are watching safe, especially in the areas Maier would bring her children. This also meant that even when she was not on the clock, Maier was still constantly keeping her eye out for children, like one little boy in New York City. Maier photographed this little boy, standing on a makeshift ladder of sorts, peering into a box just about as big as he is. The low risk of danger from this situation is most likely what caught Maier’s eye, but it was the intrigue and beauty of the situation that kept her lingering. This giant box was used to deliver “another teleset'', as stated on the box, otherwise known as a “television receiver”. People watch tv in order to take them into another world, another dimension, somewhere that makes you forget about the reality you’re living in. Maier’s viewfinder is her portal to another world, watching people and the world around her through her camera transports her to a world where she feels as though she belongs.

Luckily for the world, photography was Maier’s escape, for if it was not for photography, no one would ever have been able to experience this world from her point of view. There is another person to thank for the exposure of Maier’s view of the world, and that is John Maloof. Maloof enters Maier’s story in October of 2007, when he placed a bid at an auction on a box of negatives. The auction, hosted by RPN Sales, was auctioning off Maier’s belongings, as she had stopped paying the rent on her storage units. Maloof was working on a book about the history of his Chicago neighborhood, so he was looking for some photographs of old Chicago to put in his book. So he placed an absentee bid on the biggest box of Maier’s negatives being sold, and won it. He knew negatives did not always have the most value when in auctions, so Maloof was not expecting much, maybe just a couple shots here and there that he could use. When he began looking through the negatives, he was quickly overwhelmed by the beauty and magnitude of these photographs. He began to scan them and post them to a blog, where they began getting a lot of attention, everyone wanted to know who had taken them.

Maloof quickly began buying more boxes of Maier’s off of fellow auction goers who had purchased her boxes. He searched for a name within the boxes to try to find out who had taken all of these photographs, finally stumbling upon the name “Vivian Maier’. He did a quick search online, and nothing came up. For the couple years to follow, Maloof would search her name, only to find nothing yet again. It was not until 2009 where he searched her name one more time, and found something. It was an obituary for Vivian Maier, a Chicago nanny, from three days prior. Just like that, when Maier’s life ended, her career as a photographer finally began. The story of the “eccentric, mysterious nanny” spread like wildfire.

Soon this story began to overshadow the work itself, with many people finding, “the mystery of it more interesting than her work itself” (Finding Vivian Maier, 38:00). As people began to learn more and more about the story of Vivian Maier, the mysterious, nanny photographer, people began to know less and less about the real story of Vivian Maier, which is the story of who she really was. The story of how she came to be known leaves a lot of questions left unanswered. Some of the biggest questions that surround Vivian Maier are, “why did not she show her work to anyone?” or “what was the point of taking all these photos if not for anyone to see?” The people asking these questions have missed the point of art and photography entirely, for yes, art is a beautiful thing to share with those around you, but at the end of the day, an artist creates their work for themselves, so they can feel that sense of emotional release when clicking the shutter or touching the brush to the canvas. To Maier, the feeling that she belonged in the world she was living in, was the point. Photography was so much more to her than just showing her photos to others, photography was her way of escaping a world that she never seemed to fit into. It was the act of snapping/taking the photograph, rather than viewing it afterwards that was the stimulation of photography to Maier.

Upon discovering the answers to all these questions that are asked about Vivian Maier, the narrative of the unknown nanny, becomes one of the known photographer, and not just a known photographer, but one of the greats. Although the world would not have known of Vivian Maier, one of the greatest street photographers in the 20th century, if it was not for her intriguing story of her rise to fame, it is important to not let her story overshadow her work itself. Her photographs contain all of the elements that are needed, not only to be a great photograph, but also to be a good nanny. There’s a feeling of tenderness and acceptance that comes out when looking at her photos. They have a way of making anyone feel as though they belonged in this world, or at least in Maier’s world. Her photographs leave a lot of room for questions, questions that the story surrounding her could not answer. Although they all begin to be answered once one takes the time to understand the nanny behind the photographs, and understand the nanny’s story she never told.

Works Cited

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