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Life on the streets

Different strokes
Last Updated 21 May 2016, 18:48 IST

When she died in 2009, at the age of 83, Vivian Maier was almost penniless. She had no family or close friends. 

Her artistic creations came to light only after her death, that too by chance. It was not just a minor body of work that she left behind, but a mammoth archive of more than 1,50,000 images stored in 100s of boxes of negatives and undeveloped rolls of film. Also discovered were a large number of home movies, audio tapes and trunks full of memorabilia that included discarded items she had gathered from wayside garbage cans and waste containers.

Apart from the sheer volume, it was the sheer quality of her photographic work that brought out the secretive artiste  from obscurity and made her a popular sensation albeit posthumously. Today, Maier is exhibited widely and hailed as one of the best street photographers of   20th-century America. An award-winning documentary, Finding Vivian Maier (2014 / 84 min), directed by Charlie Siskel and John Maloof, enjoys a 4-star rating on IMDb; and a 5-star rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

By all accounts, Vivian’s was an unusual life story. Born in New York but raised in her mother’s native, France (after her father abandoned the family when she was only 4), she returned to New York in 1951. Moving to Chicago a few years later, she worked as a nanny for wealthy families for almost 5 decades. By the late 1990s she had retired and was a poor woman living in a cheap apartment. Luckily, the Gensburg family, with whom she was connected when their children were young, found her. Moving her to a spacious apartment, the Gensburgs took good care of her. 

In December 2008, she was hospitalised after slipping and hurting her head. Despite the best medical attention arranged by the Gensburgs, she could not survive for long.

Vivian’s massive body of work came to light when in 2007, it was found by chance in a Chicago storage locker and auctioned off cheaply. It was John Maloof, a young Chicago historian, who picked up a box of undeveloped photo negatives for a modest payment. Although his knowledge and interest in photography was next to nothing, it did not take long for Maloof to realise the real worth of his possession. With further steady acquisitions, Maloof became the owner of more than half a dozen of Vivian’s cameras, a 100-plus 8mm movies, 3,000 prints, 2,000 rolls of film, and about 1,00,000 negatives.

Through the lens
Interestingly, Vivian’s own tryst with photography is said to have begun in southern French Alps in the late 1940s. Her first camera, a modest Kodak Brownie box camera, worked with 1 shutter speed, no aperture and no focus control. Later on, in New York she was able to purchase her first Rolleiflex camera in 1952. Over time, she came to acquire several Rolleiflex, Leica and various other cameras.

Vivian’s diligent practice of street photography ran parallel to her work as a nanny; her humble job allowed her to roam around in the city with children she was taking care of. Her pictures suggest that she was a tough street photographer with a keen eye, perceptive mind and a soft spot for children, women, African Americans, the poor, and the aged.

Vivian recorded life around her with grit and encyclopaedic thoroughness. Her work captured the mood and elegance of city life through common people. She found most of her subjects on the streets, buses, and trams; and shot them in startling close-up. Amazingly, she dared to enter the dark corners of the inner city and picture its lower depths. 

Most of her photos were in black and white; some of them show her shooting stars and celebrities in public functions. She was also good at photographing herself; her self-portraits have a striking clarity of composition and gentleness as in other pictures. 

Quite interestingly, Vivian found resources to travel across many countries; one of her pictures shows a fisherman in Kochi staring into her lens!

Personally, Vivian seemed to possess a rather complex character. Tall, slightly awkward and an intent woman, her quirky habits included wearing men’s coats and boots. Her accent was distinctly French; she evidently preferred to be a secretive and intensely private person. On a rough day, she could be quite rude to her fellow beings. Once, when one of her wards was hit by a moving vehicle, instead of helping him to his feet, she reportedly started clicking his pictures as he lay on the ground!

Complex personality
“Yes, she was eccentric,” says Maloof. “Yes, she could be tough. Yes, she had some strange practices there and she took them on some kind of weird and wild adventures... Obviously there were weird quirks, but I think they (the families which took her as a nanny) were all for the most part, maybe with 1 or 2 exceptions, better for having Vivian in their lives. She did open their eyes. She did show them a different part of the world... I hope the documentary (Finding Vivian Maier) does more than just uncover a mysterious artiste, but tells a story that changed the history of photography.”

No wonder, the story of Vivian Maier has puzzled many observers and photo-enthusiasts. “With tens of thousands of negatives to be scanned or printed, it will be some time before the whole of Maier’s achievement and the extent of her obsession is revealed,” wrote art critic Roberta Smith (January 19, 2012 / The New York Times). “We can only count our blessings and wait.”

For Charles Siskel, the co-director of the documentary, the secret lives of unknown artists has become a matter of great interest. “After looking at Maier’s story, I haven’t been able to look at people in the same way as I did before. You really start to wonder how many great works of art have been lost; how many great artists out there are still undiscovered. Vivian may be an exception in that her work was actually found.”


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(Published 21 May 2016, 15:45 IST)

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