Vivian Maier Street Photographer

The first printing of Vivian Maier Street Photographer, published in November, sold out in less than a month. Until last week, the book could only be had for prices in the hundreds of dollars. (Happily, a second printing has been released, with a third printing scheduled for the spring.) The beautifully printed book, offering a selection of Maier’s work from the streets of New York and Chicago, as well as a number of self portraits, is edited by John Maloof, who has championed Maier’s work since he purchased a box of her negatives through a Chicago auction house in 2007. The book is long-awaited: for nearly two years, Maloof regularly posted Maier’s work on a blog.

How do we account for the appeal of Vivian Maier’s photography? The pictures describe with intimacy and wonder what it was like to live in a certain place, at a certain time. Unapologetically humanistic, they are well seen and made with confidence, the pictures celebrate life as it is lived amidst the promises, both fulfilled and broken, of postwar American cities. The comparisons of Maier with possible inspirations such as Lisette Model, Helen Levitt, and Walker Evans, among others, are not unfounded.

As compelling as Maier’s pictures are, her story is at least as compelling, as is the story of how Maloof came to dedicate himself to her archive. Briefly: Maloof, in 2007, then a 25-year-old real estate agent in Chicago seeking to assemble pictures for a book of historical photographs, purchased a box of Maier’s negatives from an auction of contents of storage lockers that had fallen into arrears. Realising that he had found something special, he purchased many of the other boxes from other customers at the auction. He ultimately assembled an archive of 100,000 negatives along with prints, audio recordings, films and personal items, including several of Maier’s hats and cameras. Maloof finally learned Maier’s identity in 2009, only to find that she had passed away only months before at the age of 83 in an Oak Park nursing home after having slipped and fallen on ice.

Maier, it turns out, had been a nanny for a family first in New York then in Chicago, and had made pictures since moving to New York in 1951, first in black and white, later in colour. She was described as being like Mary Poppins and had traveled around the world, but she had no family of her own and seemingly no close friends. While she photographed for decades, she did not always have money to have her film processed. It seems that she did not share her photographs with anyone else. Maier’s life and Maloof’s story are both told on Maloof’s Vivian Maier website. It’s been suggested that Maier’s reluctance to show her work was due to a lack of confidence, and perhaps that will be borne out by Maloof’s archives. But whether or not that was the case, it didn’t stop her from making pictures enthusiastically throughout her life.

The book is warmly edited: images from both cities and across what appear to be decades – the pictures reveal the influence of photographers from the 1940s through the 1970s – have been organised into a rough narrative. The edit raises the question, unavoidably, of whether Maloof’s decisions are based on specific assumptions of how and what he believes constitutes good street photography, and what he thought Maier was trying to do. This book is not about Maier’s trajectory as a photographer; that story is seconded to Maloof’s extended visual poem about Maier and these metropolises, though the decision to do so was undoubtedly shaped by the challenge of having to deal with an untethered archive. Vivian Maier Street Photographer will surely not be the last word on Maier’s legacy; hopefully future works will examine more closely her own path as a photographer.

Maloof’s narrative with Maier’s photos is elegant. It begins with the possibility of connection – children and adults acknowledging Maier’s camera and sometimes smiling. From there the essay radiates into an exploration of the patterns and accumulated moments of the city itself. An “x” is formed by a shadow falling hard against the scar of a long-demolished staircase on the side of a building; the bold forms are repeated in the adjacent picture of four women standing in similarly severe light against a wall. Another partially destroyed building reveals a negative space that mirrors the cut of the skyscraper across from it. A boy, his leg raised, stares back at Maier as he holds onto his father for balance while the man wipes something undesirable and probably foul from the bottom of his shoe. On the next page, the boy’s contortions are echoed by a man in a Vesuvian huddle with dirty cap and suit (but surprisingly good shoes). By the end, things have begun to crumble and people, animals, and buildings are all at risk, though the downwards slide is balanced by lovely and magical moments: a glamorous woman dressed all in white floats into the night, and the final image in the main body of the book echoes W. Eugene Smith’s “Walk to Paradise Garden”.

Surely part of the appeal of this body of work is the feeling of discovery, the sense that a secret is revealed. We’re curious about what was in Capa’s Mexican Suitcase, and we delight in Sam Stephenson’s presentations of Smith’s Jazz Loft pictures and recordings. These are secrets that fill out the flesh of icons, making them more human, connecting the dots and giving substance to their mythologies. But Vivian Maier, previously unknown, comes to us as a whole secret to be revealed. We did not even know that she was there, but now with this book and the traveling exhibitions of her work, her life and vision come unfurled simultaneously. The pleasure of her work is not just good photography, it’s something more pious: the possibility of a life devoted to photography absent of either mandate or acclaim.

Unsurprisingly, many of the articles and media reports about Vivian Maier comment on the unestablished value of Maloof’s trove and ask whether she will be recognised as a master, one of the great street photographers. Would her story be less interesting, less commanding, if her pictures were not as good? Would Maloof have been less devoted if the pictures were not so remarkable? There is value in recognising this body of work not only as important because it adds to the canon, but also because it is material evidence of a dedicated life, which I think must resonate for anyone who has been compelled to create because they had to, and because it made them feel alive. How many photographers, artists, writers, are producing material for and at their own pleasure, amateurs who do not intend to share their work? The real revelation of these pictures is that we are seeing something that, besides being beautiful, feels pure, something that is a result of a focused commitment, one that happened to have had no interest in self-promotion. Maier’s story is a reminder that the act of photography can be its own reward, that quality – and for that matter pleasure – is not always driven by a desire for success. We are each our own first audience in what we author, and sometimes we are each our own most important audience.

Leo Hsu

Vivian Maier Street Photographer
John Maloof, ed.
powerHouse Books
2011
$39.95

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Vivian Maier Street Photographer

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