All language subtitles for Finding Vivian Maier 2013 DVDrip XviD AC3 MiLLENiUM

- Paradoxical.

- Bold.

- Yeah.

- Mysterious.

- Eccentric.

- Eccentric.

- Private.

- She was
a very, very private woman.

- I never had any idea
she took pictures.

- She would take photographs-
many, many photographs.

- She would never have
let this happen.

- Is there anything
that you wish

you would have done differently
then?

- Sure, I wish I would have
found those negatives

instead of you.

- It was winter 2007.

The auction house is across
the street from my home.

I found this box
that was loaded with negatives.

- 75, there we go, $80.

- I was writing a history book,

and I needed
a lot of historic photos.

And so I would, like, you know,
take the negatives

and I'd look up into the light,

and I'd look for images
of Chicago.

-150, 160.

- There were several boxes
that went with the set.

I just went for the biggest one.

- 39 is your buyer.

39 is your buyer.

- I won it for-
I think it was $380.

The auction house
told me the photographer,

her name was Vivian Maier.

Google searched her.
Nothing at all.

I mean, absolutely nothing.

So I just kind of gave up
for a while.

I looked at some of the stuff
that night, and it was cool,

but nothing worked for the book,
so I just put it in the closet.

Just had to figure out,

"What am I gonna do
with this stuff?"

That's what sparked me
to start scanning it.

I have a reflex
where we'll be driving somewhere

and I'll just, like,
spot something

from down the road
that I know what it is

and I know that it's valuable.

I grew up doing the flea markets
with my brother.

My father did it.
His father did it.

I would do storage auctions
with my brother,

and he'd win some,
and we'd clean them out.

We threw out tons of negatives,

'cause there's no value
in negatives

to most resale people.

In these negatives
that I discovered,

what I saw at first,

I didn't know
if it was really good.

I knew that I thought
it was good.

I contacted a couple galleries.

I didn't know where to go.

I made a photo blog,
and I put about 200 images up.

##

I put a link on Flickr.

That post, it just went insane.

So I went on this mission

to piece together
the rest of her work.

And then I found
the other people

who bought boxes
and I bought their boxes.

And then I had
all these negatives-

like, insane amounts
of negatives.

You always want to know,
who is behind the work?

I just knew
her name was Vivian Maier.

Was she a journalist?

Professional photographer?

Let me just Google her name
again

to see if there's anything up.

And I found an obituary

that was placed just a few days
before that search.

I found an address in her stuff.

And after some, like,
white page searches,

I called and I said,

"I have the work, the negatives
of Vivian Maier."

And he's like,
"That was my nanny."

That was his nanny?

Why is a nanny...

Taking all these photos?

What they started to tell me
about her was-was strange.

They said,
"She was kind of a loner.

"She didn't have any family
that we knew of.

"She never had any love life
or children that we knew of.

But she was like our mother."

So it just caught my curiosity.

So what I said was,
"Do you have any of her stuff?"

And they said, "Well, I've been
keeping up the bills"

"on her storage locker.

"We want to throw
all this stuff out.

She was a pack rat."

I said, "No, no, no,
don't throw anything."

He's like,
"You don't understand.

"She was a pack rat.

"We're gonna get a dumpster.

"You're welcome to come
and help us.

"If you see anything
that you like

that we're gonna throw out,
you can have."

I just wanted to go find out
who she was, just a quick thing.

I found this leather chest.

It was, like, taped shut

with just, like, box tape
or something.

And so we cut it
and we opened it,

and it was filled to the top
with rolls of undeveloped film.

I took one canister
and I shook it,

and it rattled.

So I opened it,
and there was teeth inside.

She had stuff wedged and hidden
in everything that she had,

almost like it's like
a secret little hiding spot

for all of her little things.

A coupon, a note, a flyer,
bus passes to train cards,

her hats, shoes,

her coats, her blouses.

I have uncashed
income tax checks

from the government

amounting to
thousands of dollars.

I have around 100,000 negatives.

I have 700 rolls
of undeveloped color film,

2,000 undeveloped rolls
of black-and-white film.

I realized everything needs
to be organized and scanned

and archived.

But it was more
than I can handle myself.

So I thought, "Let's see what
the museums will do to help me."

"Maybe I could get this
into MoMA.

Maybe I could get this
into Tate Modern."

I sent them letters,
and here is the reply.

"Dear Mr. Maloof,
on behalf of the curators,

"I would like to thank you

"for thinking of the Department
of Photography at MoMA.

"Unfortunately,
the museum cannot accommodate

these photographs at this time."

At that point,
I just figured I'm on my own.

I'm gonna try to do
an exhibition.

I'm gonna do a book.

It's an insane amount of work.

I'm kind of compulsive
with stuff.

I just wanted people to see
this incredible work.

And I applied for a show

at the Cultural Center
in Chicago.

They said this was
the biggest turnout

for any artist
they had ever had.

And then the story
just took off.

- The history
of street photography

is currently being re-written.

- 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.

She-great sense of framing.

What is she looking at here?

I can't-this is the first one-

- It's a muddy
construction worker's butt.

- My God.

She had a sense of humor

and a sense of tragedy.

Beautiful.

Her 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
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 the Usiskin family?

- Yes.

- My gosh!

Yeah, she lived right next door.

- I know Vivian Maier because
she was my childhood nanny...

For about four years,
something like that.

- Her job was as a housekeeper
and a nanny.

- Vivian was my nanny.

- Vivian came into our lives

when we needed a caretaker
for my mother.

- I was just staring at her,
and I had thought,

"Where did my sister find
this lady to babysit her kids?"

- She was obsessed with
just saving bits of memories,

of moments in time.

The stuff that she collected

all helped me understand her
a little better.

I have dozens of audio tapes
that Vivian made.

I have around 150

8-millimeter
and 16-millimeter movies.

I found pictures
of Phil Donahue,

like, in his home,
petting a dog and at dinner.

- I was a single parent
in Winnetka, Illinois,

with four sons.

Along comes Vivian.

I met her in a diner

to interview her
for this housekeeper job.

She took my picture.

I was a guy running
back and forth over my shoes.

I had to do a program
every day, sometimes two.

I didn't want any trouble.

I just-you know, I just wanted
clean socks.

She was with us
less than a year.

I have a memory of her taking
a picture inside a garbage can.

I thought, "Well, you know,
they laughed at Picasso."

I didn't know.

I mean, I didn't give it
much thought.

I didn't think she was crazy.

- Vivian took self-portraits.

In my mind, I don't know

what image I had of this person,

but it was definitely not
the image that I uncovered.

- She came across as unusual.

- She wore big, big coats,
felt hats.

- The kind of thing that might
have been popular in 1925.

- She was always
kind of hiding her figure-

you know, wearing these heavy
clothes and these boots.

- They used to call her
"Army Boots."

- She was very tall.

- Seven feet?

" No!"

- Seven feet.
- She was tall.

- She must have been
about 5'9".

- Six foot?

- She liked wearing
men's shirts.

- She wore men's shirts.

- I think she said
the tailoring was better.

- She'd have kind of a-
just a straight blunt cut.

- She had hair
that stuck straight up.

- Now, looking back,

I would say she kind of dressed

like you would expect to find
women factory workers

in the Soviet Union
in the '50s or something.

- That's how she walked.

You have to swing
your arms up like this,

and you have to do
a sort of a Nazi march.

- You'd see her
on her little motorized bicycle.

I mean, I remember
sometimes thinking

she kind of looked like
the Wicked Witch of the West.

- Always had her camera
around her neck.

- Always the camera
around her neck.

- She had, like,
this great camera with-

I remember it was
a square Rolleiflex.

You flip open the thing,

and you look through
the viewfinder directly down.

- I'd lusted
after a twin-lens Rolly,

and here she had one.

- And I looked at that camera,

and it looked like
it was rather old.

- 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.

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 standing there,
and he's looking at her.

If you look at his eye line,

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,"
'cause 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 2 U2 oar garage
for two oars,

and so we had this-

- It became a two-car garage.

- It became-became
a tight two-car garage.

- Now, of course,
we'll never know

how much the boxes were
her photographs

and how much 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?

- It's so sad, really.

It's 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 a 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,
making some lunch and dinner,

taking care of kids as a nanny.

- Some of the early photos
I have are from 1951.

One of them said on the back,
"The Walkers, Southampton."

- I was surprised to see
the photographs

of my grandparents' house.

We always called it Tides' End.

- It's amazing to see it
so dilapidated.

- This was flowers.

We'd have lunches out here
and tea, and...

it was wonderful.

Vivian probably spent
the summer.

She was probably a nanny
out of New York,

tagging along with the family
and the children.

In those days, your father
worked in New York

and came out by train on Friday
and went back on Sunday.

I don't think that's changed
very much.

If you go
to the beach club today

and go down on the sand,

you'll see the nannies there.

Some of these women
have been lucky enough

to make their way up here
to the United States.

The girl who helps me, this is
her fifth or sixth year here.

- What's her name?

- Olivia.

Delightful, delightful person.

I love her dearly.

She speaks very little English,
and I speak very little Spanish.

We get along beautifully.

- It's been written about
that she had few friends.

And I consider myself
one of those friends.

I liked her a lot.

She was a terrific person.

In 1962,
I lived in Highland Park.

I had a lot of small children.

I was home a lot.

One of my children was friendly

with one of the boys
she took care of.

The children, they were always
at each other's houses,

and she would come by,
and we had good conversations

with kids swirling around us
all the time.

I had a very freewheeling,
open household.

There weren't a lot of rules-

you know, "Don't get killed
in the street."

She loved the children,
and the children loved her.

She was wonderful
to the children...

I think probably loved them

as much as she probably loved
anybody.

- Knock, knock!

- Apple.

Apple knock, knock.

- Who's there?

-Apple.

- Knock, knock.

- Who's there?

- Knock, knock.

- Knock, knock who?

God.

Well, gentlemen...

- I think she was quite lively

and wonderful person
in her younger years.

I mean, she must have been
a delight.

I can see
how they worshipped her,

because she was doing
the adventures

that normally a parent
would probably not do.

Life was more adventurous
with her around.

- She was very opinionated

about how children
should spend their time

and mainly
how they should spend it

was out and about with her.

She would load up the stroller

with the baby and her bag
and both kids,

and off they would go
on outings.

And they had their routine.

There was a Marshall Field's
in downtown Evanston,

and it had a candy counter
on the first floor.

Well, that was always
the first stop

because there were always
free samples.

- She would avail herself
very heartily

of the free samples,

meaning, like, dump!

You know, she'd dump
the whole tray of Frango mints

into her purse and walk away.

We stopped going there
all of a sudden,

but I believe that she was
kicked out

of Marshall Field's permanently.

- A really clear memory is her
setting up to take photos

of all these naked mannequins.

Some of them were headless.

Some of them were toppled over
a little bit.

I mean, it'll be probably
an amazing photograph,

but as a child,
it was taking forever,

standing there
on the corner of the street,

waiting while this weird lady
takes pictures

of these naked, headless
mannequins.

- Then they would go out

and they would look
in the alleys for junk,

because that was
what she liked to do.

She would come home
with pieces of metal,

old furniture,
and we would look at it.

"Is this art? Is this not art?

"What is this?
This could be useful.

This could come in handy
sometime."

- My brother, Robbie,

he was riding his bike home
from school,

and he got hit by a car.

- He was sort of laying
in the middle of the street,

and an ambulance was coming,
and he-

and he says-and I don't know
if this is true,

but he always said that Vivian
was taking pictures of him

laying on the ground.

- It wasn't like,
"Robbie, you okay?"

or anything.

It was more just,
"This is a good photo op."

My mother drove up

and saw my brother
lying in the street.

She said, "I thought
the dogs got hit."

Vivian was just kind of
above the fray,

and I remember thinking,
you know,

"There's Vivian taking pictures
as usual."

- She was aware
of what was going on

in politics and society
at the time.

She would bring
this cassette recorder,

and she goes to the supermarket.

And she's asking people
in line...

- Hi, Carl.
- Hi.

- I got you with my machine.

I was wondering
if you had anything to say

about all this political scene.

- Well...
- About Nixon and so on.

- I think that it happened
the Way it should

for the best of the country.

- And maybe it'll be a Warning

To future politicians.

- That's right. That's right.

- But What did you think
of the impeachment?

- Well, come on.
- Am I on tape'?

- Yes, you are. Come on.

- I don't know.

- Well, you should have
an opinion.

Women are supposed to be
opinionated, I hope.

Come on.

- There's one movie
that she made

that has a note in it.

And it says, "1972 Chicago
murder of mother and baby."

"Market where she found ad
for babysitting job,

which had led
to disappearance and death."

Then you see her walking
to the supermarket.

She's walking
in the babysitters footsteps.

You see her walking
to the neighborhood.

I just wonder if that's where
the crime happened.

She goes to the funeral home.

She's kind of...

a journalist of the era, like-

but usually you do that
to show people, you know,

to show this is what happened.

She just did it.

- One day in 1977, I was driving
on Sheridan Road,

and someone flagged me
for hitchhiking.

Plenty of people do that.

Turned out to be Vivian Maier.

- When I met Vivian
back in 1972,

I was in grad school
at Northwestern.

And I worked
in the language lab,

and it was not at all unusual

for eccentric people to be
coming through the lab.

- She was French.

She had lost most of her accent,
I would say.

- She affected what at the time
struck me instantly

as a fake French accent.

- Some people have said
she had a fake accent,

but this is-this is not true.

- My degree is in linguistics.

I have a PhD in linguistics.

And the truth is,
it was a fake accent.

- I happened to see the film

The Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse,

and I'm probably not pronouncing

the word right, and...

- There's the lilting sound
of it, you know?

"I don't really know

"what you want me to do,

"but you have to do it
and come over later,

and then everything
will be okay."

- Her voice, it seemed like
it went up and down.

You know what I'm saying?

- Oooooh.

- Her vowels were longer
in duration than French vowels.

I mean, you know, this is the-
I did a-

my master's thesis was on
vowel duration in French,

so I had a little bit
of background in it.

- I believe it's someone who had
polished their English accent,

having then lost
some of their French accent.

- You don't want to see a copy
of my dissertation, so...

- Well...

- No, you don't, really.

I asked her her name.

She kind of paused.
I remember that.

And she said, "Call me Smith."

I mean, it was very clear

she didn't want to tell me
her name.

I thought, "This is weird."

- She had been a customer
of ours.

She was a pain in the neck,
to be truthful.

We held things for her
for as long as a year.

We would say,
"What's your name?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

"Well, we can't keep it
without a name."

"All right, Miss V. Smith."

You know, ha ha ha,
Miss V. Smith.

It was patently obvious
that she was not Miss V. Smith.

And we'd say,
"Okay, phone number."

"I don't have a phone."

"Well, how are we gonna
get in touch with you

if we need to?"

"Well, you won't."

Why was she giving us
a fake name?

We didn't think as much about it
as you are.

- Now, she spelled her name
differently.

There's B-as in boy-Maier.

Every possible combination
of ways you could spell Maier-

M-e-y-e-r, M-a-i-e-r, M-a-y-e-r.

- We always called her
Miss Maier.

Miss Maters.

- She said, "Call me Viv."

- You would never have called
this woman "Viv."

- Vivian.

- Nobody called her Viv?

- No, Vivian.

- Why wouldn't you want
to tell people your real name?

I asked her what she did,

and her answer was another thing
I'll never forget.

"I'm sort of a spy."

That's exactly what she said.

I can still see her
and hear her saying it.

It was so odd.

I think the only person
who says that

is somebody who's definitely
not a spy.

Why would you say that?

- Maybe she wanted to be
somebody else.

A lot of us do that.

- If she did not have this job
as the babysitter,

her lifestyle would have been
very understandable.

The real question is, why did
she do this kind of work?

- Her intelligence
and her views on things,

there was something
very precious to her

about keeping them secret.

Vivian may have looked down,
so to speak, on the employers

who were hiring her for this
low-paying kind of work.

She identified with the poor.

I mean, she said she doesn't go
to a doctor.

She doesn't have
any medical insurance.

And I said, "Are you-
are you worried about that?"

And she said,
"The poor are too poor to die."

- She told me that when
she first came to New York,

she went to work
in a sewing sweatshop.

She realized one day
that she wanted to do something

where she could be outside
and in the world, out and about,

and see the sun,
so she took up nannying.

- She felt that it gave her
a certain amount of freedom.

Somebody else was providing
the shelter for her.

She wasn't having
to work so hard

just to make ends meet.

So she had some free time
for her photographic endeavors.

- 1959.

Vivian told her employer,
"I'm going to travel the world,

and I'll be back
in eight months."

She went to Bangkok, India,
Thailand,

Egypt, Yemen,

all of South America.

She traveled by herself...

Just her and her camera.

There are thousands of photos
from her world travels.

##

Do you think Vivian would like

the attention
that she's getting?

- I think she was a very-
I don't know.

I don't think so.

I think she was more of
a very private person.

I don't-l think
she might have seen this

as kind of an intrusion,
you know?

- I can't help but to feel
a little uncomfortable or guilty

exposing the work of a person
who did not want to be exposed.

- She was so secretive.

I think that she would like
her artwork to be honored,

But I don't think she personally
would have liked

being in the limelight.

I don't.

- She would never
have let this happen

had she known about it.

No, she never would have let it.

She-she-that was her babies.

She wouldn't have put her babies
on display.

- But I don't think
she took all those photographs

for them to just dissolve
into dust.

I think she took
those photographs to be seen.

- I find the mystery of it
more interesting

than her work itself.

I'd love to know more
about this person.

And I don't think you can
do that through her work.

- So she didn't tell you
anything

about where she came from,
her background?

You didn't know anything?

Nobody pried into that?

- No, I-not really.

- Did you know anything
about Vivian-

her family, her past'?

- No.

- It's amazing, isn't it,

that you're friendly with
someone for, like, ten years

and that you don't know
anything more about them than...

this much?

- We always thought
she was French.

Now, she's kind of, what,
Austrian?

I mean, she's from Al-from
Alsace-Lorraine or something?

- She's from New York.

- From New York?

What do you mean, from New York?

- Well, she was born
in New York.

- She was?

- She was born in New York.

No, really?

- I thought
she was born in Europe.

I thought she was French.

How did she acquire that accent?

- So...

where's Vivian from?

- She's from New York City,
born February 1st of 1926.

Speaking
from a professional standpoint,

compared to what I've done
in the past,

this has ranked up real high
on the list of difficulty.

The families usually have
some consistency

as to where they're located.

Lat least have them
in public record

where I can find information
about them,

not like this one.

The whole family
is a mystery family.

There's a few things that
we know about Vivian Maier.

One, we know
that she was never married.

She was a spinster.

She had no husband.
She had no children.

Her parents are both dead.

Vivian did have a brother,
an older brother.

Clearly, he's probably dead.

All of them seem to be private.

All of them seem to want
nothing to do

with the rest of their families.

All of them seem to be
disconnected

from the remainder
of their family.

She had one aunt
who was to leave everything

to a friend in her will-
not to family but to a friend-

and this is the reason why.

She says here-and I'm quoting
directly from her will-

"I make no provision
for any of my relatives

"for reasons best known to me

which I have disclosed to
a few of my intimate friends."

At the time of Alma's death
in 1965,

Vivian was obviously alive,
her only niece.

Whatever her hang-up was,
it went to the grave with her.

- Vivian's father was out of
the picture very early on.

So the census records show that
Vivian's living with her mother.

But I did know that she lived
in France for a while

and that her mother
was from France.

So my guess was
that there was family in France,

because the thing is,
the 1949 photos

and the 1959 photos
are the same village.

So I know she was returning
to the same place.

So I started looking up all the
stuff that she had from France.

I started looking
at the photographs of France,

looking at the little towns
and the church steeples

and how
this church steeple looks

and how that
church steeple looks

in this little village.

And I would go on the internet,

and I would look up
little villages in France

and try to match the steeples.

It's like matching
a fingerprint.

I knew I had
at least one of the villages

that she was in found...

Saint-Julien and Saint-Bonnet

in this remote little
sheepherder village

in the French Alps,
population 250.

- She might have been offended
that you found her little town.

That was none of your business.

She might say, "God, God."

Why did he do that?"

- For some reason,
my curiosity is overwhelming

to find out more about Vivian.

I'm uncovering an artist.

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?
- Yeah, 100%.

I have this same print.

- Vivian took this picture.
- This is her print.

- He says, "Aren't you happy?"

- Her box camera.

I have-l have a similar one.

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

- Vivian's mom?

- 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.

- You can do like this.

- Oui, oui.

- The letter starts out,
"Dear Mr. Simon."

- Wow.

- 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,
9:00 to 5:00,

at a rate of about
a few thousand a week.

I've been developing
the black-and-white film,

so I have about a couple 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 25,000
to 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 recognize
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 Garry Winogrand

had a desk full of rolls of film
that he never developed.

So they're developing them.

Eugéne 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 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 recognized
that this is really great art.

I do think her work needs to be
appreciated by-by the world.

These are the new prints?

- Yeah.

- 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.

It's too bad she wasn't
discovered ten years earlier.

- Marble.

Yeah, you two.

Here's the picture of
Miss Maters right in the corner.

And I wouldn't call her
"Vivian," because,

you know, she'd have your guts
for garters

if you called her that.

Not "Missus," not "Vivian."

She was Miss Maters.

She was my governess
from when I was 5 years old

up until
I was about 11 years old.

I've got in my baby book
the exact date.

It was, 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 I had-

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.

The 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,

and she would literally ask them
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 a picture.

- Or somebody crying.
- It was just, "Bam!"

They would...

You know, like, "My God,
what is this woman doing?"

- We would joke about
how we wanted to hit her

over the head with the 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 craft 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,

and they're crashing
and grinding together

and smashing,

and then 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 behavior.

She, sort of ditched us.

We were all taking
a walk together,

and she would duck down an alley
and just disappear.

The police finally found us.

I think she wanted to scare us.

And I remember getting lectured
by the police like,

"You can't leave
your babysitter"

and me saying, "No, no."

My babysitter left me."

There were some accidents,
which I knew weren't accidents,

that everybody knew
weren't really accidents,

where all of a sudden, there's
a kid screaming in the basement

with the door shut
and the lights off.

Yeah, that kind of thing.

- She was mean.

I don't know how else to say it.

I don't know;
She had, like, a dark side.

I remember one time
she said,

"These men, " they'll have you
sit on their laps,

and then you'll feel something
poking you."

And I can't even remember
the context

of when she said that,
but it just was,

she had this, like, anger in her
towards men,

and now I know exactly
what she was talking about,

but as a kid, I really-
I knew what she was saying

was dark and a little not right.

- I've seen her more than once

jump back in fear, you know,
from a man.

She said several times
over several years,

men, all they were out to do
was ruin you.

Stay away from them.
Be careful of them.

You know,
that all they want is sex.

- She was always afraid
of being touched.

- I remember she was standing up
on a stump,

taking a picture
of some sort of incident.

The man apparently thought
she was falling.

He reached up, and all she saw
was a man reaching for her,

and she decked him-

she thought
he was attacking her-

and gave him a concussion,
sent him to the hospital.

- I would bet money

that she was, um, brutalized
in some way,

attacked in some-l mean, or,
you know, molested, whatever.

I hate to say that,

but something happened to her
that was awful,

because nobody would act
like the way she did.

- I remember some of

the more strong emotion things,
I'm afraid.

It's harder to remember
some of the other, um...

I don't know if you want to go
into this, but I will.

I will.

I mean, there were things
that happened to me

that were not good.

Miss Maier was force-feeding me,
forcing me to eat

'cause I wasn't finishing all
on my plate.

My parents found out,
and my dad got angry.

But if my dad found out
exactly how,

it would have been worse.

She would hold me down,

she would shove the food
in my throat,

and then she would choke me
until I would swallow it.

And she would do that
over and over again.

There was very much
of a dark side to her

that I have not gone into.

She would lose it sometimes.

I think the first time
she hit me

was when I was five years old

'cause I was trying to learn
to tie my shoelaces,

and I wasn't doing it right,

and she got very frustrated
with me,

and so she started slamming
my head

into the side of this bookcase.

I mean, she wouldn't hit me
in the face.

Obviously,
I didn't have bruises there,

but she'd grab me by the wrists
and swing me around the room

and slam me into things

when she got really upset
about something.

And I was eight years old
before I could break her grip.

After that,
she didn't do that again.

I was strong enough.

I mean, she was
a brilliant person,

and I think she really cared,
and I think she tried,

and I don't know
if any of the others

will ever talk about that,
if it ever happened to them.

I don't know.
Maybe she got it together.

I'm hoping she did.

- I really hate saying
these things about her,

because I've always felt guilty

about not keeping Viv
for longer.

My husband and I
were talking then

about having a foster child.

Viv said, "if you want
to take care of somebody",

why don't you take care of me?"

And then she kind of laughed,
but she meant it.

I think she really wanted
to be brought in

to be a member of our family,
but that...

wasn't really
what I had bargained for.

- So there it is.

In this little house,
Miss Maters lived upstairs.

- My father did provide a room
for her above his office.

I only had a chance
to see it once,

back when I snuck up behind her,

'cause she kept a padlock on it.

- So, yeah,
this is totally different.

This was the forbidden zone.

No one was allowed to see
where Miss Maters lived.

- Miss Maier went in there,

and she left the door
open enough for me to see,

and the room was literally
filled, floor to ceiling,

with newspapers.

- See how the floor is sloped?

- I told my dad, and he said,

"That's why the floor
is sagging so much."

He ended up having to put
a steel I-beam post

in his office
because the floor was sagging.

He didn't know why.

It was just totally full.

- This floor was Viv's domain.

It occurred to me that maybe
I would need to go up there

when she wasn't home,

so she grudgingly gave me a key,
and so I went in.

You can tell
where she had been walking,

and it was just this narrow path

that you could just barely
traverse like this.

And where would the bed
have been?

Right here.

Stacks of newspapers
almost to the ceiling.

You may think I'm exaggerating.

No, I am not.

Just stacked, stacked, stacked,
stacked, stacked,

stacked everywhere.

High-you know,
high stacks of paper.

How she even could get
to the paper...

I don't even know how much
she even looked at the paper.

I began to see that she was
stacking newspaper

elsewhere in the house-
in the basement,

and in the back, we have
a little back entryway,

and she would stack newspaper
out there.

Now, the idea was always

that there were articles
she wanted to save

for the day when she did
get around

to cutting out the parts
that she wanted to keep.

It concerned me, but...

I thought, "Whatever. Whatever."

Um...

- I gave her a ride
to her place of employment.

I looked at her desk
and piles of stuff there.

She was certain
that her employers

were coming into the room
she had

and going through her items.

She would rig the books
and so forth on her desk

so that if they were moved
half an inch,

she would know that
when she got back.

Or so that was Vivian's story.

And she was also certain

that people were looking
through binoculars

and could see through the window
of her room.

- She was progressively getting
more and more reclusive,

more and more of a hoarder.

- Everybody was saying
resoundingly, "My God."

You've got to get rid
of your nanny."

I don't think that Mom and Dad
really realized

the extent to which she was
living with mental illness,

'cause she was.

She was. She was.

She-she, um...

Yeah, it was a little past
eccentric.

- My neighbor came over.

He said,
"I'm painting the bathroom.

Do you have a stack
of newspaper?"

I said, "Sure."

There was a huge stack
right by the back door.

I gave him a big chunk
like this.

I said, "Sure. Go ahead."

Well, when Viv came home,
she saw

that that stack of newspaper
was shorter

by three feet or two feet
or whatever,

and she was angry and horrified.

"Who took my papers?
Who took my papers?"

- And she just went berserk.

I mean, she went crazy.

I remember an outside scene
with screaming and yelling

where she's yelling at this guy,
telling him to bring them back,

but some already had paint
on them and were ripped.

- "Now they're all covered
with paint!

"Now I can't use those papers.

"They're covered with paint now.

How could you give him
my papers?"

So I said-l just said,
"Viv, those aren't your papers.

"Those are my papers,

and there are too many papers
in this house."

- I remember my parents
telling me,

"Viv's not gonna be with us
anymore.

She's gotten too crazy."

Like, not that she wasn't
already crazy

but that the craziness
has increased

to a level that we can't
tolerate anymore.

- I remember so clearly
having to say to her, "Viv",

I think you're going to have
to look for another job."

How hard it was
to say that to her.

But you know what?

I don't think
she was even surprised.

She looked back at me,
and she said,

"Do you?" she said.

"Do you?" she said.

"Well, then, what I want
is two months' notice

and two months' pay"
or something like that.

She gave me her-sort of
what she wanted

as if she had it
on the tip of her tongue

and she'd figured it out.

And I didn't know whether
that was because

she had been dismissed
from positions often enough

that she knew what to say

or whether she had, in a way,
anticipated it.

My husband and I
and our children,

after she was gone, do you know
we just jumped in the car

and drove up to Michigan,

which is something
we never used to do,

just because it was
a huge emotional thing

not to have her-

you know, see,
I'm still weepy about it,

because I really cared
about Viv,

and I think she cared about us,

and it was just
one of those things

where she was a person
who didn't fit in very well.

She just had those edges
that couldn't-

and I think we-
well, I flatter myself.

I think we were one of
the most sympathetic, accepting,

and congenial families
that she worked with.

I don't know that.
I think it may be true.

And we couldn't make it work.

- In 1996, we were getting my
mother's house ready for sale,

and when I told Vivian, I said,

"You can stay here
for a couple of months.

"I won't put it
on the market yet.

"You know,
we have to get things ready,

"and, you know,
I'm not kicking you out.

You can stay."

Vivian was to be there,
you know, and to show it,

but she was not at all helpful
with the real estate people.

She just didn't want
to let them in.

They were calling me saying

she won't let them
show the house, you know.

"You've got to do something,
Judy?

So I would call her and say,
"Vivian, you know,

you have to let people see
the house."

They did manage to get in,
and they did manage to sell.

I think we closed
the last day of the year.

The lawyer called and said,
"Judy, we're just afraid

she's not gonna be out."

And I said, "She'll be out."

Don't worry. She will be out."

##

- The last time I saw her, um,
I'm still unhappy about.

It must have been, like,
probably 2000.

I was in Wilmette, going
to the beach with my daughter,

her children, and four other
children of a friend's.

- It was a hot summer day,
like August,

like '100-degree day,
and all of a sudden,

I see this woman
walking down the street,

and immediately we're like,
"There's Vivian."

- I hadn't seen her in 30 years,

but we recognized each other
at once.

And we both, "Hi."

"How are you, Vivian?"
and "How are you, Carole?"

And "it's been so long."

- We're like, "Well, it was
great, you know, to see you."

And we said,
"We have to get going."

And she was like,
"Please don't leave."

You know, she was like,
"Carole"-

you know, my mother's name.

She was like,
"Carole, please don't leave."

- You know, when you're with
a bunch of kids

and they're swirling around you

and they want to go to the beach

and it's a hot summer day,
you know, you're, like, stuck.

And she kept saying,
"Talk to me.

Let's talk. Let's talk."

And I kept saying,
"I can't do it, Vivian.

I have to go. I have to go."

She kept saying,
"But you're my friend.

You're my friend."

And, um, I dropped the ball.

That's all I can say.

I feel badly about it-

and the despair in her voice
about seeing a friend,

and I feel that I let her down.

So I proceeded to go
to the beach with the kids.

I said, "Follow us,"
but she didn't want to do that,

so that was the end of that one.

- I do remember once

she wouldn't tell me
where we were going.

"I don't want to tell you.
It's a surprise."

She took me to the stockyards.

It didn't come
into my consciousness that,

"Well, this is where they go
to kill the animals."

There was a trailer
full of sheep.

I do remember guys
poking at them with sticks

to get them out
down this long ramp.

After they were done
offloading the sheep,

they started throwing out
a dead sheep,

one that got trampled.

That was the first time
lever saw death.

Looking back, thinking about it,
it didn't bother me.

It was just kind of odd.
I couldn't understand it.

I've always been
a critter person,

and these are my guys,
the sheep.

- The end of her life was
something that I worried about

when she worked for me.

I thought,
"How can this end for her?"

I don't think it had
a happy ending.

I was very glad that these men
that she took care of

when they were little kids

kind of came to her rescue.

- They got her an apartment
and paid for her rent.

- Do you live in the area?

- Yeah, I live in the area.

- Do you remember a woman who
used to sit on this bench a lot,

wearing a big floppy hat?

- Um, was she the French lady?

Yeah, I remember her.

People who still, um,
live around here,

yeah, we remember her.

She was here a lot,
sitting on the bench,

but I don't think
anybody really talked to her.

There's a lot of
eccentric people around here,

and I just thought
she was one of them.

You knew
to just leave her alone.

Sometimes she'd be
at the dumpsters.

You'd ask her, you know, "Do you
need help or do you need food?"

And she would just kind of
yell at you in French.

- How did you know her?

- Just from seeing her
in the neighborhood.

- And you would sit with her?

- Well, I'd always sit
on the bench,

and she'd sit there,

and finally
it took weeks or months

before she'd even speak to me.

- I would see her in the alley
all the time,

going through the garbage,

so I had a bunch of old clothes
and a wool hat one time

I gave her, and she took it.

She said, "That's great."

I'll wear that when I sleep."

- She was very short
with people,

but she was funny, though.

Nice lady.

- When I was riding my bike,
sometimes I'd cross her path,

and she'd yell to me,
"Get a bell! Get a bell!"

And sometimes I'd be out
in the alley in the winter

and she'd see me without a hat,

and she'd yell,
"Get a hat! Get a hat!"

- She was about that bell
on the bike.

- Who would have known that she
was actually a great artist

and she'd come
to dumpster-diving?

- That's the saddest-

- And, I mean,
sitting on the park bench-

literally,
she'd go across the street.

She'd get a can of food.

What did she have the one day?

Was, like, corned beef hash
or something?

I mean, right out of the can,
not even warming it up,

with a spoon...

And said it was delicious.

- She was much more damaged
than I thought,

and I have a lot more empathy
for her.

Um...

I just think, um...

what a lonely lady, you know?

Incredibly lonely

and misunderstood.

So, yeah, I think, I mean,

now if I were to see her today
after this,

I wouldn't be as hard on her,
probably.

- Somebody called me and said
the old lady in the park,

she fell,
she kind of passed out,

and the ambulance is out there.

So I went across the street,
and at that point,

they were loading her
onto the little cart there,

and she was telling the people,
the paramedics and such,

that she did not want to go.

She wanted to go home.

And they said
that she has to go with,

and she looked at me as if
to say, "Can you do something?"

But there was nothing I could do
about it.

You know,
I asked the paramedics.

They said, "No, she has to go."

But that was it.

I mean, they put her in the
ambulance and took her away.

And then after the fact,
you know,

a lot of people
in the neighborhood said,

"Whatever happened
to the old lady?"

And nobody ever knew.

- You have to try to draw
from the evidence you have

some understanding
of the individual.

I think her pictures
show a tenderness,

instant alertness
to human tragedies,

and those moments of generosity
and sweetness.

I see her

as an incredibly watchful,
observant, caring person.

And probably why she was a nanny

was that she had
those capacities.

- 1962,when she took
a lot of the pictures,

the kids would always play
in the ravines.

It's the most beautiful spot
in the world.

You know, instead of

this straight-edged
suburban community,

you always went there

'cause you wanted the kids to
have a little touch of nature-

you know, wild nature.

There were a patch
of wild strawberries

somewhere in there.

And I think she liked it
so much,

that's why they buried her
there.

It's a place that they
remembered she was happy.

- Now, you tell me
how you can live forever.

Come on.

- She might have gotten to the
end of her life and thought,

"Why didn't I try
to get that work out there?"

Some people's character
prevents them

from pushing that little bit
you need to push

to get the work seen.

You know, she didn't
defend herself as an artist.

She just did the work.

A canon is often established,
and so when someone comes in,

there's always the sense
that they're secondary figures,

but I don't feel her
as secondary.

When I look at the pictures,
I always feel something primary.

- I think that the work
is so good

that it's really winning over
a lot of people

who were more dismissive of it
previously.

Where it'll wind up, who knows?

- Much of the art world
establishment

still hasn't accepted
Vivian Maier's work.

But people don't care.

They're not waiting for that
validation from institutions.

They're claiming Vivian Meier's
work for themselves.

Her work is now in galleries
in New York.

It can be seen in L.A.

- There's one in particular
that I bought which I love.

There's an abject poverty
in the frame,

but there's also a happiness
in spite of it all.

- Her work is being seen
around the world-

London, Germany, Denmark.

They're embracing it, and
they're embracing Vivian Maier.

- Oui, oui, oui.

- Maybe this is the best way
of all for her,

to have it happen
after she's died.

That would probably make Viv
happiest,

'cause in her own life,
the attention, I think,

she would have found
overwhelming.

- 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.

That's what she taught me,

is that she got the life
she wanted.

She had it.

- I understand a lot more
about her.

But why was this person
so private,

yet so prolific in an art form
that she never shared?

Who knows?

She did it
so it wouldn't be forgotten,

and here it's not forgotten.

- 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.

And then she's gone.

- Web, I suppose nothing
is meant to fast forever.

We have to make room
for other people.

Ifs a wheel.

You get on,
you have to go to the end,

and then somebody else
takes their place.

Now Pm going to close

and quickly run next door
to do my work.