The new issue of Reporters Without Borders magazine, 100 Photos for Press Freedom, is dedicated to Vivian Maier.
Vivian Maier, 140,000 Photos and Then She’s Gone.
It’s one of the most fascinating stories in contemporary photography. Throughout her life, Vivian Maier, a discreet housekeeper, roamed the streets of New York and Chicago, camera slung over her shoulder, carrying out a masterful enterprise from the shadows. A series of improbable coincidences brought her thousands of photographs to light: striking framing, suspended moments, a sharp gaze… From unknown to iconic, Vivian Maier is the subject of the new Reporters Without Borders album, with a preface by novelist Camille Laurens.
Vivian Maier’s talent can be compared to the greats of photography. Looking through her work, it’s hard not to find echoes of Diane Arbus, Gary Winogrand, or Saul Leiter. And yet, Maier’s trajectory is absolutely unique.
Born in New York in 1926, she took her first photographs in France, where her mother was originally from, in the early 1950s. Employed as a governess, her leisure time was spent roaming the streets of New York, then Chicago—where she remained until her death in 2009—with a Rolleiflex slung over her shoulder, immortalizing the city and its inhabitants.
If in 2007, a certain John Maloof, then a real estate agent looking for photographs of Chicago for a book project, hadn’t acquired Vivian’s archives, which were sold at auction, her name—and her work—would have remained unknown to us.
Intrigued by this discovery and fascinated by the quality of the images he discovered in the boxes (most of the reels had not yet been developed), he shared them online. He set out to track her down and documented his investigation in a film, The Search for Vivian Maier, directed with Charlie Siskel, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2015.
The enthusiasm was immediate. The world was stunned to discover a woman and a body of work.
We know only a few snippets of Vivian Maier’s life, gathered through the testimonies of the children she looked after, or from residents of Champsaur in the Alps, where everyone remembers the great American woman who took photographs. Those who knew her speak of a cultured, generous, and atypical woman, but also cold and distant.
The images, in black and white and color, reveal an extraordinary curiosity for everyday life and detail, shots sometimes taken on the fly, sometimes the result of a genuine encounter. Vivian Maier has also made self-portraiture a genre in its own right in her work, photographing herself in shop windows, reflections, and shadows, with constant inventiveness. While she humorously portrays the powerful, she shows empathy for the less fortunate, revealing a portrait of a two-tiered American dream.
The portfolio of approximately one hundred pages offers a journey in Vivian Maier’s footsteps, between New York and Chicago, illuminated by contributions from Eva Bester, Christine Coste, Geoff Dyer, Anne Morin, and a foreword by Camille Laurens.
