Finding Vivian Maier Page #2

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

figure out. So far, no.

I think people would

have loved her work.

I mean, I could even say,

Robert Frank with a square format.

Lisette Model...

Helen Levitt, definitely.

Diane Arbus.

Some of the street portraits.

Had she made herself known, she would

have become a famous photographer.

Something was wrong, something...

There's... there's a piece

of the puzzle missing.

That's beautiful.

I really want to know, why did

Vivian make these images?

What drove her to such compulsion,

to an obsessive degree,

to take so many pictures?

Why were they never shown?

I started to unbox all of her stuff.

I'm finding leads.

You know, receipts

that she had. But...

Her... Her receipts are

from the '70s and '80s.

And in the '70s and '80s in Chicago,

there was no area code.

And I started calling these phone numbers,

attaching every various area code.

773, 312, 708, 847, 630, 815...

Was she ever a nanny for

a San Franciscan family?

- Yes.

- Oh, my gosh.

Yes, she lived right next door.

I know Vivian Maier because

she was my childhood nanny.

For about four years.

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