Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife

327 Pages·2017·9.69 MB·English

by  Pamela Bannos

Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier
A PHOTOGRAPHER’S LIFE AND AFTERLIFE
Pamela Bannos
The University of Chicago Press + + + Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2017 by Pamela Bannos
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more
information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2017
Printed in the United States of America
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-22647075–7 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-22647089–4 (e-book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/[9780226470894].001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bannos, Pamela, 1959– author.
Title: Vivian Maier : a photographer’s life and afterlife / Pamela Bannos.
Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017022051| ISBN 9780226470757 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226470894 (e-
book) Subjects: LCSH: Maier, Vivian, 1926–2009. | Women photographers—United States—
Biography. | Street photography—United States.
Classification: LCC TR140.M335 B36 2017 | DDC 770.92—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
FRONTISPIECE: Pamela Bannos holding a color transparency of an image of Vivian Maier from the
Ron Slattery collection. Maier dated the film envelope “April 22, 1955, Central Park.” Original in color.
Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Beginnings and Endings
Chapter One A Fractured Archive
Chapter Two A New World, a New Art Form
Chapter Three A Family Divided / Photography’s Complex History
Part 2: The Emergence of Vivian Maier
Chapter Four Young Photographer / Final Days
Chapter Five New York Street Photographer / Viral Vivian
Part 3: The Reinvention of Vivian Maier
Chapter Six Mysterious Nanny Photographer
Chapter Seven High Art / Downward Spiral
Part 4: The Aftermath
Chapter Eight The Missing Picture: Vivian’s Maier’s Last Thirty Years
Chapter Nine Those Who Did Not Know Her
Chapter Ten Who Owns Vivian Maier’s Photography?
Epilogue
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations of Sources Used in Notes
Notes
Index
Plates
Introduction
There are many ways to get the wrong picture about Vivian Maier. Call her a
nanny, as if that was her identity, instead of a photographer. Call her just a
Chicagoan or just a Frenchwoman, instead of a born Manhattanite and self-
styled European. Call her Vivian, as if you know her well. Call her a mystery or
an enigma, as if no one ever knew her, or ever could.
To get the right picture, look at her squarely, as she would look at you: on her
own terms, from her own evidence of who she was and what she did. Only then
can we begin to see Vivian Maier, woman and photographer, and begin to enter
her world.
The story of the Vivian Maier phenomenon has been told so many times that it
can now be reduced to a few short phrases:
Her storage lockers went into arrears.
A young man named John Maloof bought a box of her negatives.
He Googled her name and found that she had died a few days earlier.
He discovered the woman known today as the mysterious nanny street photographer.
But rarely is a story as simple as the filtered-down version that results from
multiple retellings. Each link in the chain of the Vivian Maier story branches to
reveal a much more complex and nuanced saga. Our current lack of
understanding of this woman and her passion for photography stems from
oversimplifications of her emergence and packaged versions of the story.
Ethical issues have largely been glossed over in favor of a heroic narrative
that benefits the people who have been selling her work. We are told that they
have saved Vivian Maier from oblivion and have allowed us to own pieces of
her legacy. Many people believe that Maier would be pleased with the sharing of
her work in this way; yet she plainly chose to not share it while she was alive.
Some feel that Maier would have destroyed her work if she didn’t want it to be
found; one writer has even suggested that she had saved it for us.
I have looked carefully at tens of thousands of Vivian Maier’s images. I have
walked in her footsteps. I have delved the archives in search of everything we
might know about Vivian Maier and her work. As I entered the world of her
photographs, a different person emerged for me than the one who was shaped for
the public imagination. I also learned about Maier’s development as a
photographer and her life as an independent woman. She cultivated an air of
photographer and her life as an independent woman. She cultivated an air of
mystery, but she no longer seems like a “mystery woman” to me.
This book is a counterpoint, a counternarrative, and a corrective to the public
depiction of Vivian Maier and her work that emerged through five photo books
that were published between 2011 and 2014, drawing on two separate collections
of Maier’s photography, one belonging to John Maloof and the other to Jeffrey
Goldstein.1 Each book was larger than the last. Hundreds of her pictures also
appeared in documentaries about her. Altogether, the books and movies
reproduced more than a thousand images—possibly illegally. In addition, Vivian
Maier’s photography has spread across every social network site and countless
individual blogs.
In the time since her work first emerged into the public eye, Vivian Maier
became big business: Jeffrey Goldstein, who amassed his collection for
$100,000, sold $500,000 worth of her work in one year, and John Maloof’s film,
Finding Vivian Maier, has grossed more than $3.5 million.2 A third collector,
Ron Slattery, sued a gallery for $2 million on account of damage to some Maier
photographs.3 Some of Vivian Maier’s vintage prints are priced upwards of
$12,000 apiece. There have been posters, brochures, postcards, and movie DVDs
—not to mention the fortune to be made in licensing fees.
In my research, I found repeated themes that permeate both Vivian Maier’s
work and the story of its discovery and propagation. High and low culture
intermingle, with profound economic results; Maier’s work and her life are
defined over and over again by presumptions about and representations of her as
a woman; and both in life and work, no one can quite agree on her story, her
character, and her value. Even in France, where she spent key parts of her
childhood and young adulthood, opposing associations have claimed Maier’s
legacy. Two men from opposite sides of Maier’s mother’s family have claimed
to be her heir—with profound implications for those who claimed the right to
reproduce and profit from her photographs.
Vivian Maier’s abundant legacy (more than four tons of stored boxes) was
scattered at auction. As a result of the way her photographic work was dispersed
and resold, dozens of people now own her possessions and pieces of her work.
Since I began studying her fractured archive, I have found and been contacted by
individuals who were at the auctions of her possessions and others who
subsequently bought her belongings on eBay.
While the rest of the world may be hearing of her story for the first time, in
Chicago the story has become familiar. Chicago is where “Viral Vivian”
emerged, where the major players in her story reside, and where the press has
incessantly reported on the triumphs of her works’ exposure, and some locals are
now “Vivian Maiered-out.” In the summer of 2014, prints from Jeffrey
Goldstein’s collection were exhibited simultaneously in four separate Chicago-
area venues. The abundance of photographs threatened to water down Maier’s
oeuvre, doing her no favor in its presentation. A local newspaper headlined an
article “Vivian Maier: Cottage Industry.”4 A local writer penned his version of
the saga and called it “The Vivian Mire.”5
The scuffles around ownership of Vivian Maier’s legacy have diminished her
presence, relegating her to the background in her own photographs. In many
ways, Vivian Maier’s world was established before she was born: she
perpetuated the legacy of her mother and grandmother, who were live-in
servants, and her mother’s illegitimate birth established the first in a line of
family secrets. Maier entered the world of photography, which like her took
shape in both France and New York and, like her, has no simple lineage. Vivian
Maier’s multiple shooting strategies remained constant. Her earliest known
photographs reveal a confident and informed photographer—not a “street
photographer” or a “suburban nanny photographer.” Maier and her photography
were all of that and much more.
Vivian Maier’s story is a more complex story than a few short phrases can
describe. We need to thoroughly understand both it and her if we are to
accurately honor her life and legacy.