Admired Photographers: Vivian Maier
I would like to start a new monthly series dedicated to all the photographers whose work has had a great influence on my own photography, not only artistically but aesthetically and communicative. And I couldn’t think of anyone better to kickstart this series than the mother of women street photographers and the author of the — probably — most famous and repeated self-portrait in the history of photography: Vivian Maier. I am really excited to write about her because she produced so much work throughout her life without being recognized for it, an injustice that I believe we are still reproducing with new artists nowadays.
Vivian Maier was born in New York in 1926 to a French mother and an Austrian father, having records of Vivian living in France for some periods of time throughout her childhood until her final return to the USA in 1951¹. It was in France when it is thought Maier started working on her photography with a Kodak Brownie a couple of years before her return to New York, where she began working as a nanny, a profession she would work on for all her life¹.
In 1952, Maier bought her now famous, due to her self-portrait as a reflection in the streets of New York, Rolleiflex¹ camera which she employed in exploring the streets of New York, shooting and perfecting her street photography style while documenting the city’s life in the years she remained in New York. In 1956, Vivian Maier left for Chicago to work for another family, the city in which she lived until her death in April 2009¹. During the time with this family, she taught herself to develop the rolls of film into printed photographs in her private bathroom, which she converted into a darkroom from which to work¹. Unfortunately, when her nanny services were no longer required during the 70s, Maier had to move from family to family, unable to continue developing her rolls, accumulating over 100,000 negatives¹.
All her work was discovered in 2007 at an auction of her belongings from an unpaid debt by John Maloof, who has been working in collecting and recovering Maier’s photography into an archive¹ that could, finally, give Vivian Maier the recognition she deserved.
Even though we might never know why Maier kept her work hidden for all her life when it was quite clear the passion she felt for all aspects of photography, from shooting to developing; and her perseverance for learning, improving, and experimenting; she has become a reference in the art of street photography, especially for women. Photography, and the arts in general, is a difficult profession to enter as a woman even today as it is still a very masculine world. So if we can learn something from Vivian Maier, not only her passion, is to share our work with the world in any way possible, not waiting to our last days for our work to be discovered.
This is precisely what we should be asking for in the industry, to give us a chance to showcase our work. Using Instagram, Twitter, a website like the one I have, or any other form of social media is a great tool for us photographers, but we need the photography world to take a leap and trust emerging photographers more. We need the opportunity to live out of what we love to do as I imagine Vivian Maier would have loved to do too if she had the confidence to trust her well-demonstrated aesthetic and photographic capabilities.
One of the most powerful things about photography is just witnessing somebody’s life — Amy Sacka
