It is said, most especially in the twenty-first century–what with the “democratization” of the internet–that an artist can no longer “just be” an artist. They must also master the ability to promote and market their work, which, there can be no denying, certainly detracts from being able to do the actual work. Put the time in necessary that you ought to be instead of creating a book proposal or some such ultimately fruitless endeavor on the road to “acceptance.”
In refreshing contrast to this sentiment, Vivian Maier lived her life by the idea that it truly is all about the work when you are an artist pure of heart and spirit. What’s more, her poverty-stricken lifestyle also speaks to a rare honesty that is hard to come by in the artistic community of now, where it’s no coincidence that everyone who seems to “make it” just so happens to also hail from an affluent background. Because Maier was all too aware of her circumstance, she knew she had to come up with an enterprising job scenario in order to make her life’s passion “work for her.” This meant giving up on a dreary sweatshop position in New York, where she was born, to embark on an unlikely lifelong stint of nannying. Though the documentary isn’t exactly clear on just how she managed to convince employers she was “right” for the job, each and every subject was quick to describe Maier as “eccentric,” the expected euphemistic smile underlying each utterance of the word. But then again, maybe eccentricity was a more desired quality in a child care candidate back in the day, when the Mary Poppins trope was still strongly at play. It certainly seemed to serve Maier well enough as she managed to take hundreds of thousands of photographs in her lifetime, which, to be sure, inferred she might have been a somewhat negligent caretaker (as Finding Vivian Maier‘s interview subjects corroborate). Alas, an artist can’t be everything. In fact, it’s almost rude to ask her to take her head out of the clouds long enough to perform “average” tasks like engaging in paid work or bothering with human interaction. Yet Maier knew she must at least perform the bare minimum of these acts if she wanted to pursue photography as freely as possible.
The Cinderella story of Maier’s discovery–of being “found”–only adds to the bizarreness of her tale. Unearthed by real estate developer John Maloof at an auction estate sale in 2007, his eye for value and profit proved useful in determining that the photographs were something special. Granted, that eye was somewhat retrained by an art historian who reached out to Maloof when he was trying to sell the photographs on eBay. Alerting him to their value, Maloof then tried a different tack (glossing over this aspect in the documentary, along with the fact that fellow Maier bid winners Ron Slattery and Randy Prow even exist). Of course, there are moments when Finding Vivian Maier feels like it should be called John Maloof’s Quest to Find Vivian Maier, but, for the most part, it remains focused on its mysterious and highly secretive subject.
Although her life ostensibly bore some deep-rooted trauma that made her perpetually distrustful of men (and all people in general), in any photograph in which she proves herself to be the original selfie queen, there is a clear-cut innocence–a child-like essence to Maier. This, too, could very well be why she gravitated toward the nanny profession. Leaving an indelible impression on those she worked for, Maier’s “eccentricities” increasingly came across more as mental illness, particularly with regard to Hello, My Name Is Doris-level hoarding. A glimpse into her past reveals that surely abandonment and inconsistency of living situations (bounced between continents until finally moving back to New York at age twenty-five) provided a bridge of fear into her mind. One that insisted upon keeping every connection at arm’s length, if that.
Maier’s talent–which did not extend to printing, proving further her undiluted artistic spirit in being able to only funnel her efforts into one medium–was not merely in “taking pictures,” but also in drawing out her subjects. As it is stated in the documentary, “As she was photographing, she was seeing just how close you can come into somebody’s space and make a picture of them. That tells me a lot about her. It tells me that she could go into a space with a total stranger and get them to accommodate her by being themselves, and generate this kind of moment, you know, where two presences were actually kind of vibrating together.” In truth, this could be the very reason Maier remained faithful to her art–it was the closest she could allow herself to be to anyone in the split second click of intimacy.
Her lack of ties to any one person or place led her to take a trip around the world in 1959, photographing milieus ranging from Los Angeles and Bangkok to India and Italy. It is believed she financed the trip with a windfall from the sale of a family farm in Saint-Julien-en-Champsaur. So yes, sometimes poor people–starving artists–can catch a break when destiny wills it so. In point of fact, the sheer seeming randomness of Maier’s life is almost too random not to be somehow calculated (e.g. babysitting for Phil Donahue’s kids in the 70s). It is in this way that her refusal to bother with “promotion” has vindicated her in the end. For clearly the work has been able to speak for itself. To promote itself. With, yes, some very generous help from Maloof, who will not have you forget that he’s been instrumental. But hey, credit where credit is due. And maybe there was no one better equipped to handle her fame than, well, anybody but herself.
As one of her former charges notes of things working out for her to be posthumously discovered, “In her own life, the attention I think…she would’ve found overwhelming.” Maier’s constant isolation and sequestering is, of course, naturally viewed as some sort of tragedy. But as another former charge pointed out, “Viv was supposed to be downtrodden, right? She was, like, a nanny. That’s not considered to be a pretty high-ranking position in life. Not married, not any social life to speak of. She didn’t have these measures of status that people aspire to. But she didn’t have to compromise one bit. She did what she wanted.” And, to be honest, that’s not something most “artists” of the present can say, all too willing they are to bend and bow as they suck the proverbial cockhole of “tastemaking” art world puppeteers, themselves egregiously lacking in taste. In short, Maier was a trailblazer not just in photography, but in her authentic love of the medium, and not its potential trappings (a.k.a. fame and money).
The title Finding Vivian Maier is filled with multiple meanings–in the one sense she was found through her work, her life finally pieced together despite all her best efforts at remaining mysterious and phantasmal. Did she know somewhere deep down, all along, that she would be vindicated? That her artistic value, therefore her life’s purpose, would acquire such great meaning? In another sense, Maier found everyone else–the very essence of humanity detectable in every negative. She honed in on overt vulnerabilities and fleeting moments of joy in such a way that an artist focused on promotion and becoming “something” probably never could. One ought to think about this the next instance they find themselves palpably losing time to the “cause” of advancement through aggrandizement: what is that really doing to improve art itself?
Aware of the scarcity of time and how important it is that we choose to use it to our utmost advantage, one of Maier’s recordings of herself (complete with spotty French accent and all) unintentionally sums it up best with regard to the triviality of marketing, “Well I suppose nothing is meant to last forever. We have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel. You get on, you have to go to the end, and then somebody else takes their place. Now I’m going to close and quickly run next door to do my work.”
