Finding Vivian Maier Page #4

"I'm not going to tell you. "

"Well, we can't keep

it without a name. "

"All right. Miss V Smith. "

You know, "Ha-ha-ha, Miss V Smith. "

It was patently obvious that

she was not Miss V Smith.

And we'd say, "OK, phone number. "

"I don't have a phone. "

"Well, how are we going to get in

touch with you if we need to?"

"Well, you won't. "

Why was she giving us a fake name?

We didn't think as much about it...

as you are.

Now, she spelled her

name differently.

There's B as in boy Maier.

Every possible combination of

ways you could spell Maier.

M-E-Y-E-R. M-A-I-E-R. M-A-Y-E-R.

We always called her Miss Maier.

Miss Maiers.

She said, "Call me Viv. "

You would never have

called this woman Viv.

- Vivian.

- Nobody called her Viv?

No. Vivian.

Why wouldn't you wanna

tell people your real name?

I asked her what she did, and her answer

was another thing I'll never forget.

"I'm sort of a spy. "

That's exactly what she said. I can

still see her and hear her saying it.

It was so odd.

I think the only person who says that is

somebody who's definitely not a spy.

Why would you say that?

Maybe she wanted to be somebody else.

A lot of us do that.

If she did not have this

job as a baby-sitter,

her lifestyle would have

been very understandable.

The real question is, why did

she do this kind of work?

Her intelligence and

her views on things,

there was something very precious

to her about keeping them secret.

Vivian may have looked down,

so to speak, on the employers

who were hiring her for this

low-paying kind of work.

She identified with the poor.

I mean, she said she

doesn't go to a doctor,

she doesn't have any

medical insurance,

and I said, "Are you...

are you worried about that?"

And she said, "The poor

are too poor to die. "

She told me that when she

first came to New York,

she went to work in

a sewing sweatshop.

She realised one day that

she wanted to do something

where she could be outside and

in the world, out and about,

and see the sun,

so she took up nannying.

She felt that it gave her a

certain amount of freedom.

Somebody else was providing

the shelter for her.

She wasn't having to work so

hard just to make ends meet,

so she had some free time for

her photographic endeavours.

Vivian told her employer,

"I'm going to travel the world. "

"I'll be back in eight months. "

She went to Bangkok,

India, Thailand...

Yemen...

All of South America.

She travelled by herself.

Just her and her camera.

There are thousands of photos

from her world travels.

Do you think Vivian would like the

attention that she's getting?

I think she had a very...

I don't know... I don't think so.

I think she was more of

a very private person.

I don't... I think she...

she might have seen this

as... as kind of an

intrusion, you know?

I can't help but to feel a

little uncomfortable or guilty

exposing the work of a person

who did not want to be exposed.

She was so secretive.

I think that she would like

her artwork to be honoured,

but I don't think she personally would

have liked being in the limelight.

I don't.

She would never have let this happen,

had she known about it.

No, she never would have let it.

She... That was her babies.

She wouldn't have put

her babies on display.

But I don't think she took

all those photographs

for them to just dissolve into dust.

I think she took those

photographs to be seen.

I find the mystery of it more

interesting than her work itself.

I'd love to know more

about this person.

And I don't think you can

do that through her work.

So she didn't tell you anything

about where she came from,

her background?

You didn't know anything?

Nobody pried into that?

No. I... I... Not really.

Did you know anything about Vivian?

- Her family, her past?

- No.

It's amazing, isn't it, that you're friendly

with someone for, like, ten years,

and that you don't know anything

more about them than this much?

We always thought she was French.

Now, she's kind of, what... Austrian?

I mean, she's from Als...

from Alsace-Lorraine or something?

She's from New York.

From New York? What do

you mean, from New York?

- Well, she was born in New York.

- She was?

- She was born in New York.

- No. Really?

Oh, I thought she was born in Europe.

I thought she was French.

How did she acquire that accent?

So, where's Vivian from?

She's from New York City,

born February 1st of 1926.

Speaking from a

professional standpoint,

compared to what

I've done in the past,

this is ranked up real high

on the list of difficulty.

The families usually

have some consistency

as to where they're located,

I at least have them in public record,

where I can find information about them.

Not like this one.

The whole family is a mystery family.

There's a few things that

we know about Vivian Maier.

One, we know that she was

never married. She was a spinster.

She had no husband,

she had no children.

Her parents are both dead.

Vivian did have a brother,

an older brother.

Clearly, he's probably dead.

All of them seemed to be private.

All of them seemed to want nothing

to do with the rest of their families.

All of them seemed to be disconnected

from the remainder of their family.

She had one aunt, who was to leave

everything to a friend in her will.

Not to family, but to a friend.

And this is the reason why.

She says here, and I'm quoting

directly from her will,

"I make no provision for

any of my relatives,

"for reasons best known to me,

"which I have disclosed to a

few of my intimate friends. "

At the time of Alma's death in 1965,

Vivian was obviously alive,

her only niece.

Whatever her hangup was,

it went to her grave with her.

Vivian's father was out of

the picture very early on.

So the census records show that

Vivian's living with her mother.

But I did know that she lived

in France for a while,

and that her mother was from France.

So my guess was that there

was family in France.

Because the thing is, the 1949

photos and the 1959 photos

are the same village.

So I know she was returning

to the same place.

So I started looking up all the

stuff that she had from France,

I started looking at the

photographs of France,

looking at the little towns

and the church steeples,

and how this church steeple looks and

how that one looks in this little village.

And I would go on the internet and

look up little villages in France,

and try to match the steeples.

It's like matching a fingerprint.

I knew I had at least one of

the villages that she was in.

Found.

Saint-Julien and Saint-Bonnet,

in this remote little sheep-herder

village in the French Alps.

Population 250.

She might have been offended

that you found her little town.

That was none of your business.

She might say, "God, oh, God.

"Why did he do that?"

For some reason,

my curiosity is overwhelming

to find out more about Vivian.

I'm uncovering an artist.

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