Finding Vivian Maier

Paradoxical.

- Bold.

- Yeah.

Mysterious.

- Eccentric.

- Eccentric.

- Private.

- She was a very, very private woman.

I never had any idea

she took pictures.

She would take photographs.

Many, many photographs.

She would never have let this happen.

Is there anything that you wish

you had done differently than...

Sure. I wish I would have found

those negatives instead of you.

Ten dollars... Let's go harder.

Ten bucks.

Then I'll have to end in five.

So can I have...

It was winter 2007.

I'll have to go seven, anyone at seven?

Seven and a half. Ten.

And ten, gotta go $10...

The auction house is across

the street from my home.

I found this box that was

loaded with negatives.

$70. 75 there... $80.

I was writing a history book, and I

needed a lot of historic photos.

And so I would, like, you know, take the

negatives and I'd look up into the light,

and I'd look for images of Chicago.

150, 160...

There were several boxes

that went with the set.

I just went for the biggest one.

39 is your buyer, 39 is your buyer.

I won it for, I think it was $380.

The auction house told

me the photographer,

her name was Vivian Maier.

Google searched her...

nothing at all.

I mean, absolutely nothing.

So I just kind of

gave up for a while.

I looked at some of

the stuff that night,

and it was cool, but nothing

worked for the book,

so I just put it in the closet.

I just had to figure out, what am

I going to do with this stuff?

That's what sparked me

to start scanning it.

I have a reflex, where we'll

be driving somewhere,

and I'll just, like, spot

something from down the road

that I know what it is and

I know that it's valuable.

I grew up doing the flea

markets with my brother.

My father did it. His father did it.

I would do storage

auctions with my brother.

And he'd win some,

and we'd clean 'em out.

We threw out tons of negatives.

Cos there's no value in negatives

to most resale people.

And these negatives that

I discovered, what I saw at first,

I didn't know if it was really good.

I knew that I thought it was good.

I contacted a couple of galleries.

I didn't know where to go.

I made a photo blog and I

put about 200 images up.

I put a link on Flickr.

That post, it just went insane.

So I went on this mission to piece

together the rest of her work.

And then, I found the other

people who bought boxes,

and I bought their boxes.

And then I had all these negatives,

like, insane amounts of negatives.

You always want to know

who is behind the work.

I just knew her name

was Vivian Maier.

Was she a journalist?

Professional photographer?

"Let me just Google her name again

to see if there's anything up. "

And I found an obituary that was placed

just a few days before that search.

I found an address in her stuff.

And after some, like,

WhitePages searches,

I called, and I said,

"I have the work...

the negatives of Vivian Maier. "

And he was like,

"Oh, that was my nanny. "

That was his nanny.

Why is a nanny...

taking all these photos?

What they started

to tell me about her

was... was strange.

He said, "She was kind of a loner.

"She didn't have any

family that we knew of.

"She never had any love life

or children that we knew of.

"But she was like our mother. "

So it just caught my curiosity.

So what I said was, "Do you

have any of her stuff?"

And they said, "Well, I've been keeping

up the bills on her storage lockers.

"We wanna throw all the stuff out.

She was a pack rat. "

I said, "No, no, no, don't. "

He's like, "You don't understand.

She was a pack rat.

"We're gonna get a dumpster.

You're welcome to come and help us.

"If you see anything that you like that

we're gonna throw out, you can have. "

I just wanted to go find out

who she was. Just a quick thing.

I found this leather chest.

It was, like, taped shut with just,

like, box tape or something.

And so we cut it and we opened it.

And it was filled to the top

with rolls of undeveloped film.

I took one canister and

I shook it, and it rattled.

So I opened it and there

was teeth inside.

She had stuff wedged and hidden

in everything that she had.

Almost like... it's like a secret little

hiding spot for all of her little things.

A coupon, a note,

a flyer, bus passes, train cards.

Her hats. Shoes.

Her coats, her blouses.

I have uncashed income tax

cheques from the government

amounting to thousands of dollars.

I have around 100,000 negatives.

I have 700 rolls of

undeveloped colour film.

2,000 undeveloped rolls

of black-and-white film.

I realised everything needs to be

organised and scanned and archived.

But it was more than

I could handle myself.

So I thought, "Let's see what

the museums will do to help me.

"Maybe I could get this into MoMA.

Maybe I could get this into Tate Modern. "

I sent them... letters.

And here is the reply.

"Dear Mr Maloof,

on behalf of the curators,

"I would like to thank you for thinking of

the Department of Photography at MoMA.

"Unfortunately, the

museum cannot accommodate

"these photographs at this time. "

At that point,

I just figured, "I'm on my own.

"I'm gonna try to do an exhibition.

"I'm gonna do a book. "

It's an insane amount of work.

I'm kind of compulsive with stuff.

I just wanted people to

see this incredible work.

And I applied for a show at the

Cultural Center in Chicago.

They said this was the biggest turnout

for any artist they had ever had.

And then, the story just took off.

The history of street

photography is being rewritten.

- Vivian Maier.

- Vivian Maier.

- Vivian Maier.

- Saved from obscurity.

In death, she is getting the

fame that she never had in life.

John Maloof is still working his

way through all Maier's negatives.

My mission is to put Vivian

in the history books.

My first impression,

when I saw the work,

was the kind of delight when

a surprise comes your way

and you feel that somebody,

hitherto undiscovered,

suddenly makes their work

available and it looks good.

It looks like there's

an authentic eye

and a real savvy about human nature

and photography, and the street,

and that kind of thing

doesn't happen that often.

I see thousands of pictures. Day after day,

people send me their websites to look at.

And when I flick through them,

I feel most of them are undistinguished.

But Vivian's work instantly had those

qualities of human understanding

and warmth and playfulness,

that I thought,

"This is a genuine shooter. "

She had a great eye.

And she... Great sense of framing.

- Here... this is the first one. I can't...

- It's a muddy construction worker's butt.

Oh, my God!

She had a sense of humour.

And a sense of tragedy.

Beautiful.

Those photos of

children are beautiful.

Beautiful sense of light,

environment.

I mean, she had it all.

Was she very prolific?

Did she shoot a lot?

In total, there's probably

about 150,000 negatives.

She shot a lot.

She never showed her work to anybody?

That's what I'm trying to

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