Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier was an American street photographer. She was born on February 1st 1926 in New York City. Vivian’s mother was French and her Father was Austrian, much of Vivian’s early life was spent in France although she was born in the U.S.A. Around 1949 she started taking her first photos while still in France, the camera she had at the time was a modest Kodak Brown box camera. The camera was amateur with many restrictions such as no focus control, one shutter speed and the viewer screen was tiny.

In 1951 Vivian Maier returned to the U.S.A. on a steamship called the De-Grass, once in the U.S she works as a nanny with a family from Southampton. When she makes her final move to the suburbs of Chicago, Another family employs her as a nanny for their three boys, this family would become the closest family she had for the rest of her life. Vivian Maier was often described as “Mary Poppins”. As a nanny she raised the three boys like their mother. The motherly instinct came naturally to Vivian, she’d take the children to strawberry fields to pick berries and also arrange plays with all the kids around that block.

Vivian was quite secretive about her past, she would tell people that she was born in France and learned English from watching theatres and plays which she loved doing. Vivian’s life was like a theatre with everything playing in front of her eyes and her camera taking the most interesting moments in life. Vivian had no family in the picture, she was singular and she created an identity for herself, this

is how she would remain for the rest of her life. Vivian never married, had any children or friends that knew her on a personal level, the

closet people to her were the families she did nanny jobs for.

During her time as a nanny Vivian Maier travelled the globe for her passion. In the mid 50’s and 60’s she went on trips to places like Canada, South America, Asia, the Middle East and other places around the world or even in the U.S. itself.

In 1956 when Maier was in Chicago she was able to use a darkroom and also having a private bathroom. These two locations would help her to develop he

black and white film, but as the children were entering adulthood it ended Maier’s employment with the first Chicago family. As Vivian Maier was moving from family to family in the early 70’s she had to abandon her development of the film and the consequence was that rolls of her undeveloped and unprinted work started to gather up. Around this time Vivian switched to colour photography with cameras such as German SLR cameras and a Kodak Ektachrome 35mm film. As time went on Vivian’s photos became more abstract straying away from people and instead onto things like newspapers and graffiti. Vivian was also hoarding objects she found from garbage cans and other places throughout the environment.

When the 1980’s came around Vivian had to deal with another problem, this time it was to do with financial stresses and very little stability. Once again she was forced to abandon her films of coloured photos and these also began to pile up. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s Vivian started to put her camera and film in storage lockers but in 2007 due to non-payment of rent her belongings were auctioned off to several buyers including John Maloof. In 2008 Vivian slipped on ice and banged her head in Chicago, She was thought to make a full recovery but it turned out that her health was deteriorating. In April 21st 2009 at the age of 83 she passed away leaving behind the treasure trove of her work.