Gripping story of a prolific and astounding street photographer

Finding Vivian Maier

• ****

• Directors: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel

• 84 minutes

• Showing Monday, March 24 at 9:15pm at Liberty Theatre

‘I am the mystery woman’, nanny Vivian Maier tells the children playfully in film reel footage discovered after her death. As understatements go, it’s a big one.

A career-carer, born in New York but with a youth spent in France, who regularly changes her name and is staunchly secretive about her life and past, is intriguing enough.

But it’s when Finding Vivian Maier unveils its subject as a prolific and, quite frankly, astounding street photographer that the story of this surreal, solitary wanderer becomes a gripping tale.

Maier left behind over 100,000 negatives that get up close and personal in the lives of people in, among others, the US, Canada and France.

John Maloof, one of the documentary’s directors and its chief storyteller, buys them at an auction because he thinks they may help with a student project.

The pictures he discovers are captivating. Upon further digging he locates the rest of the recently-deceased Maier’s possessions — and finds boxes upon boxes of negatives, film reels, letters, receipts, badges and all kinds of other hoarded items.

Struck by the quality of his find, and the fact no-one seems to know anything about this woman, he pieces together the story from her work and by interviewing those that knew her best, who, it turns out, are amazed at how little they  actually knew.

The story can rather crudely be divided into two themes: her photographs, which will leave you open-mouthed in admiration, and her life.

Maloof and his combination of interviewees get to the bottom of some of the latter but a lot remains simply hinted at. She never loses that air of mystery even as extra layers of detail about her life are painstakingly unravelled.

Fascinatingly, as well as clearly being a loving nanny, some of the families she worked for also speak of a dark side. 

She could be cruel to the extreme with some of the children in her care, while there is a huge clue of a major family rift that hints at her isolation but could have done with more exploration.

Her reaction to physical contact, especially from men, and stories of her mental deterioration in later life also suggest a deeply troubled mind.

Ultimately, though, she will be remembered as an artist that got closer to capturing human emotion than most dream of.

The fact she never revealed her shots to the world while she was alive begs the question, which the film touches on, of whether she actually wanted anyone to see her art?

Accounts of her hidden life reveal a complex woman; what she has left behind reveals a truly extraordinary artist. 

To see Maier’s photos visit: www.vivianmaier.com