Finding Vivian Maier - film review

This inspiring documentary explores the life of secretive street photographer Vivian Maier
Inspiring: Finding Vivian Maier © Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection
Vivian Maier
18 July 2014

Vivian Maier snaps portraits of herself in which she looks too cool for school. She could be Suede's Brett Anderson, taking a stroll between gigs. In fact, though, she was a working stiff: a full-time nanny, in 1950s Chicago, who also cleaned floors. It sometimes seems as if fame is about who you know. As this inspiring documentary makes clear, Maier's photographs were able to speak for themselves.

A New Yorker of French Austrian stock, Maier was drawn to people she bumped into on the street: couples holding hands, society women, down-town bums. She'd do anything for the perfect shot, yet never tried to get her work shown and often left negatives undeveloped. Geeky John Maloof, who discovered her work by accident, co-directed the film and appears in front of the camera. Like an obsessive lover, or long-lost relative, he wants to know everything about Maier. Even the bad stuff.

We discover that this secretive, isolated, increasingly paranoid woman (who died in 2009), bullied – and even force-fed – one of her charges. In a home movie, we hear her trying (and failing) to coax a child into conversation. She was not a reliable people person, it seems, except when looking into her Rolleiflex. Trying to make sense of the contradictions is a tantalising business. The footage got found. But there's still more to learn, one suspects, about an artist who preferred to think of herself as a spy.

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