Finding Vivian Maier Page #5

If I'm leaving this

giant boulder unturned,

because I don't go here,

it would be a mistake.

- Vivian took this.

- Are you sure?

Yes. 100 per cent.

I have this same print.

Vivian took this picture.

This is her print.

Oui.

He says, "Aren't you happy?"

Her box camera.

I have... I have a similar one.

- No, that's her mum's camera.

- Vivian's mom?

Oh...

- That's Vivian?

- Yes.

Wow.

Another thing I found in

Vivian's stuff was this letter.

It was written in French, and it's talking

about a photography lab in France.

- And you can do... like this.

- Oui.

The letter starts out,

"Dear Mr Simon... "

D'accord.

Previously, we thought

Vivian had no intentions

of having anybody else print

her work or show her work.

This letter proves that

assumption wrong.

Vivian knew she was a

good photographer,

and she knew that these

photographs were good.

She wanted to show them to people.

She may not have had that

happen while she was alive,

but we're doing it now.

I stopped scanning myself,

because I just couldn't keep up with it.

There's a lab in New York with

technicians scanning her work,

Monday through Friday, nine to five,

at a rate of about a

few thousand a week.

I've been developing the

black and white films,

so I have about a couple of

hundred left to develop.

It's a very complicated

and tricky procedure,

because you have to get

the formula correct,

and there's only one

chance to get it right.

It's... it's magical.

We don't know what she

would have printed,

what she would have chosen or edited.

We're seeing work now for the first

time that Vivian never saw herself.

When you contacted me, I wasn't

sure if I wanted to get involved

in a project with posthumous prints.

I just didn't think it would be

the right fit for the gallery.

This is the room where we

store our photographs.

I think there are about between 25

and 30,000 photographs in here.

I mean, it's more than most museums have.

Vivian Maier, we've had

more interest in this work

than perhaps any other photographer

I've ever worked with.

It's a big problem trying to get

her work into institutions.

The problem is that the

art world establishment

still won't recognise Vivian's work.

Museums usually deal with

the final product, the print,

that was made by the artist

in the artist's life.

They don't want to interpret an

artist's work from where they left off.

That's bogus, because Gary Winogrand

had a desk full of rolls of film

that he never developed.

So they're developing 'em.

Eugene Atget's work was

printed after his death,

and then ended up being

acquired by MoMA.

I mean, it's frustrating,

because it's being done and...

but nobody wants to do

it for Vivian's work.

She did print some of her work,

but it... it was largely not

the best edit of her work.

She was a masterful photographer,

but printing was not her thing.

That's common, though. I mean,

Cartier-Bresson hated printing,

and Robert Frank

wasn't a good printer.

But they hire printers.

They hire somebody to print for them.

Good work is good work, and it's

recognised that this is really great art.

I do think her work needs to be

appreciated by... by the world.

These are the new prints.

Cool. Yeah, these are great.

Thank you for showing me.

They're yours.

The only way this work can move forward

is if there's money that is made.

The sale of prints will

be a part of that.

Of course, I wish that I could

give her money, you know...

She's gone. I mean,

there's nothing I can do.

She always had a money problem.

God knows, she probably

could have used the money.

Too bad she wasn't discovered

ten years earlier.

Marble!

Yeah, you two.

Here's the picture.

Miss Maier's right in the corner.

I won't call her Vivian because...

She'd have your guts for garters

if you called her that.

Not Mrs. Not Vivian.

She was Miss Maiers.

She was my governess from

when I was five years old,

up until I was about 11 years old.

I've got in my baby

book the exact date.

It's like March of '67

until about 1974.

Inger and I were best friends, and so I

would spend a lot of time with Miss Maier.

She would take us down to the city,

and we would just walk.

In the worst parts of town,

she'd walk very quickly,

and so my little legs had

to fly to keep up with her.

She would swing her

arm just like this.

And then her stride was just massive.

Inger used to just beg

her to slow down,

and she would just

drag her alongside.

Poor thing.

She'd take pictures of everything.

She would see a subject.

Something that would interest her.

She'd open her camera,

she'd focus it...

These poor, you know, people,

she would literally ask them

to... to, like, pose for her.

She didn't tend to pose people.

She's like, "Stand there, wait. "

It was just the way it was.

"Impoverished people. Take picture!"

Or somebody crying, it was just, bam!

They... You know?

Like, "Oh, my God,

what is this woman doing?"

We'd joke about hitting her

over the head with a camera,

because she embarrassed us so much.

It was imposing and rude.

They felt, I'm sure, that they

were being mocked in some way.

I'm surprised she didn't get shot.

My mom put her foot down and wouldn't let

Miss Maier take me into the slum areas.

She loved to read the paper, she liked

it that we took the New York Times,

and she read it every day,

and she always had an eye for the

bizarre, the grotesque, the incongruous.

She wasn't interested

in sweetness and light.

She liked headlines that revealed

the folly of individuals.

Stories that would enable her

to basically say, "I told you so. "

"I told you so. "

Some man murders his wife and

then gets caught in cold blood,

"I told you so. "

I mean, these things that

revealed the folly of humanity.

If you look at her art,

she sees the bizarreness of life,

the incongruity of life, and the

unappealingness of human beings.

There were little things,

all the time,

that she was just plain...

in microscopic ways,

just chipping at me.

All the time.

I would go down,

with my allowance money,

to the crafts store,

and buy myself a thousand little tiny,

you know, like rainbows and...

Glass tchotchkes.

Viv would look at my trove

of tchotchkes and hate it.

She would get a big mop bucket

and she would fill it with hot,

soapy water, yes, and ammonia.

And she would have the

ammonia be such a strength

that you couldn't be near the bucket.

Clearly, to need that much ammonia,

you would surely be cleaning

something very, very dirty.

She would take her arm,

and just swipe all the

tchotchkes into the bucket.

They're crashing and grinding

together, and smashing,

and they're all covered in ammonia...

Me, I sort of just quietly tolerated

whatever was happening to me in my life.

My brother acted out,

and I don't think that she had good

ways of coping with his behaviour.

She, sort of ditched us.

We were all taking a walk together,

and she ducked down an alley

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