In this blog post, we follow the life and work of photographer Vivian Maier, discovered posthumously through the documentary ‘Finding Vivian Maier,’ calmly examining whether her solitude was a life she chose for herself or an inevitability shaped by her era and circumstances.
Why I Wanted to Know About Vivian Maier
While I’ve watched documentaries aired on television relatively often, I’ve hardly ever encountered documentary films. The number of documentary films I’ve seen so far can be counted on one hand. For this reason, I found myself pondering which work to analyze. Then, I recalled having seen a Vivian Maier photography exhibition in the past.
At the time, I visited the exhibition out of curiosity after hearing she was an artist who gained fame posthumously, but my reaction was merely, “Oh, I see.” It’s often said that to truly appreciate photography, one must understand the artist. I realized that since I had viewed the photographs without understanding the artist, I likely hadn’t fully grasped the works.
Starting from this awareness, I selected the documentary film ‘Finding Vivian Maier’ as my subject for analysis. Through it, I aimed to study her background and mindset, and to more accurately convey the feeling and meaning held within those photographs.
Sequence Analysis
Opening Sequence
What single word could describe Vivian Maier? The film begins by asking interviewees about Vivian Maier and showing each defining her in one word.
The Discovery of Vivian Maier
Director John Maloof visited an auction house searching for materials to write a history book when he accidentally acquired a large quantity of film and photographs. He collected the scattered traces of Vivian Maier one by one, scanned the film, and uploaded it to the internet, gradually gaining significant attention. Through this process, the director developed an increasingly strong curiosity and showed a desire to seek out the person Vivian Maier herself.
The Artistry of Vivian Maier’s Photography
Vivian Maier’s photographs are not easily handled by museums or conventional galleries. Consequently, the director personally curates an exhibition at an art center, announcing that it set a record for the highest number of visitors ever. Subsequently, through interviews with photographers, the film presents an artistic analysis of Maier’s work, revealing the reality that while she is recognized by the public, she still lacks sufficient recognition within the contemporary art world.
Vivian Maier’s Traces
Using a phone number found among Vivian Maier’s belongings as a clue, the director sets out to find people who might know information about her. Those who remember her describe her appearance and style. The common portrait they paint is of a highly unusual person. She was someone who fiercely guarded her privacy, yet also possessed an adventurous streak. She loved children, and children were drawn to her.
Her accent sounded French, but a language professor explains it was a fake French accent. Various testimonies also reveal aspects of Vivian Maier’s life, including her extensive travels around the world.
Her unknown past
Even the witnesses know almost nothing about Vivian Maier’s family or past. The director even visited the National Archives, but the staff there stated that almost no official records about Vivian Maier remained, making it difficult to obtain information.
Traces of Vivian Maier Found in France
Based on her French accent and the information from the archives confirming her French mother, the director meticulously compared each photograph taken during her travels in France using Google searches to locate the villages where she might have stayed. The villagers remembered Vivian Maier, and it was revealed that a local photo studio had wanted to show people the pictures she had taken. This indicates she recognized herself as a photographer. This process also reveals her dissatisfaction with the established art world’s perception.
Vivian Maier’s Dark Side
Vivian Maier worked as a nanny and took photographs in her spare time, but she wasn’t always warm towards the children.
According to testimonies from those who employed her as a nanny during their childhood, she would take children to slums, force-feed them, hit them, confine them, or even take young children to slaughterhouses, which could be traumatic. Such acts could be considered child abuse.
Another aspect was her hatred of men. While no one knows what happened in her past, testimonies indicate she despised men and would not tolerate any physical contact from unfamiliar males. Lastly, mental health issues are also mentioned. She had a pathological obsession with collecting, showing intense fixation on her collected items and symptoms of paranoia. These traits made forming relationships with others difficult, ultimately driving her into a vagabond-like existence.
Vivian Maier’s Later Years
She came to live in an apartment thanks to connections made through her work as a nanny. Yet she was always alone and felt profound loneliness. The empty bench, repeatedly featured in the film, powerfully expresses Vivian Maier’s profound loneliness. Furthermore, the story of how she considered someone she met after decades to be a friend, only for that person to leave soon after because they needed to live with their family, shows how this brought even deeper loneliness to Vivian Maier. According to testimonies from people who lived in the same apartment building, no one saw her again after she was taken away in an ambulance.
Understanding Vivian Maier
This sequence begins by showing a continuous stream of photographs taken by Vivian Maier. Experts offer interpretations and evaluations of her photographic world, showing how, over time, her work gradually gained recognition, leading to exhibitions in various places. This once again emphasizes the fact that while she was not sufficiently recognized within the established art world, she was strongly embraced by the general public.
It also suggests an interpretation that through her camera, she broke down the boundaries between herself and others, entering the same space. The film concludes by playing the voice left on her tape recorder. “Nothing lasts forever. You have to make room for others. It goes round and round. You live your life and head toward the end, and then someone takes your place. Now I’m heading toward the end, and I’m running through the next door to do my work.” These words adorn the film’s conclusion.
Analysis
‘Finding Vivian Maier’ is thought to take the form of a participatory documentary. This is because the traces of Vivian Maier and most information about her are presented through the testimonies of witnesses who knew her. Human memory can be distorted, and the content of testimonies can also vary depending on the emotions each person felt. In this regard, the film’s limitation lies in the fact that, excluding the film and materials she left behind and the documents from the National Archives, it is difficult to view the entire documentary as possessing very high reliability.
The film shows the director’s journey to find Vivian Maier in the early part, and then proceeds mostly through interviews with witnesses.
Throughout this process, critiques of the contemporary art world surface intermittently. At these points, it sometimes felt less like conveying accurate information about Vivian Maier and more like the director’s own complaint about why the traces of her she painstakingly gathered aren’t accepted by the current art world.
Nevertheless, it was positively received that this film conveyed her human aspects more strongly than her greatness. Had the story merely depicted her as someone whose photos were discovered by chance, who turned out to be extraordinary, and who was a kind person who loved children, it might have been less compelling. However, by also showing Vivian Maier’s darker side, her mental struggles, and the loneliness of her later years, the film confronts us with Vivian Maier not as an idealized genius, but as a human being. This allows the audience to connect with her on a much deeper level.
