Finding Vivian Maier Page #4

You see, the Rolleiflex is

a great disguise camera.

Because it wasn't up here, where she

had to alert somebody on the street

that she was photographing them.

She could be sort of

secretive down here.

The camera was shooting from below.

And it gave her pictures a

kind of towering magnitude.

There's a picture of a guy.

He's just an ordinary street guy.

But he has a power and dignity.

And he's... he's standing there

and he's looking at her.

If you look at his eyeline,

he's looking right into her face.

And she probably looked down and focused

and then looked right up at him.

And he looked at her and

she fired the shutter.

Street photographers

tend to be gregarious

in the sense that they can

go out on the street,

and they're comfortable

being among people,

but they're also a funny

mixture of solitaries

at the same time as being gregarious.

You observe and you

embrace and you take in,

but you stay back and

you try to stay invisible.

She didn't like to

talk about herself.

Some people I meet

and they're very open.

She was not an open person,

she was a closed person.

She lived on the third

floor in our attic,

and one of the first things she asked

me for was please to put in a lock,

so that she could lock

her area securely.

It was a real serious lock.

She was mysterious.

She said don't ever open

this door, to her room.

I think she made friends with

me because she sized me up,

and thought I was strong enough

to lift a bunch of boxes for her.

I broke the springs of my car.

I think that gives you an idea

of how much weight I lifted.

She mentioned that she

brought her life with her,

which meant a number of boxes.

We said, "Sure, no problem. "

We had a garage.

There was a porch off of the room,

you know, sort of those sleeping porches.

And it was piled high with boxes.

We put them in our garage,

which, fortunately,

was a two-and-a-half car

garage, for two cars.

- And so we had this..

- It became a two-car garage.

It became... it became a

tight two-car garage.

Of course, we'll never know how much

the boxes were her photographs,

- and how much of the boxes were...

- John knows.

Well, but she had so many boxes.

I'd like to know why you would

hoard all of this great art.

Why would...

why wouldn't you share it?

What's the point of taking

it if no one sees it?

So sad, really.

Really sad.

If you could have just

shown her all the pictures

and held her down in a chair

somewhere so she couldn't...

put tape on her mouth so

she couldn't tell you no.

Obviously, the woman was so creative,

and it must have been galling...

to just, you know, be a maid.

Wash the floors,

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