During her lifetime, she was unknown to anyone as a photographer. Her life story is reminiscent of a detective story. Too many mysteries, unanswered questions. Despite the fact that the legacy of Vivian Mayer is more than 100 thousand negatives, the researchers are sure that this is not the whole archive. Part of it is likely lost.
She could become a newspaper reporter, a journalist, and do what she loves, getting paid for it. Glory would still overtake her, albeit in her old age. But the complete lack of vanity led to the fact that Vivian Mayer worked all her life as a nanny, and spent her last years of her life in a not the best nursing home.
The world would never have known about photographer Vivian Mayer if her work had not accidentally fallen into the hands of a caring researcher. Realtor and freelancer John Maloof had a habit of attending small auctions that sold property from vaults whose owners had stopped paying rent.
In 2007, he purchased a box of negatives at auction for $400. Having developed several films, Maloof realized that he had found a real treasure. He returned and bought the remaining boxes. John decided that as many people as possible should know about an unusual photographer and created a site with photos, but in 2008 it was not so easy to promote a new site: for several months no one went to the page. Maloof decided to go the other way: he posted several works on Flickr and created a discussion. Photos of Vivian Mayer instantly became popular.
John Maloof claims he did not know the name of the owner of the negatives at first. Only a year later, having sorted through the archive, he found an envelope with the name - Vivian Mayer. Maloof began looking for the mysterious photographer, but by that time the woman was no longer alive.
Bit by bit, Maloof began to collect information about the photographer. Her official biography was not particularly rich in events. Vivian Maier was born in 1926 in New York to a French mother and an Austrian. The father left the family when Vivian was four years old. Mother and daughter lived in an apartment with a woman photographer, Jeanne Bertrand, who apparently taught the girl how to take pictures. For some time the family lived in France, where relatives of Vivien's mother had a farm.
Vivian finally returned to America in 1951. She settled in Chicago. For some time she worked as a seamstress, but soon decided to become a nanny. Her native language was French, and this circumstance helped her get a well-paid job in respectable Chicago families. She necessarily agreed that she would have a separate room (which would be locked) and days off.
Her pupils and parents remember her as an excellent teacher, although a somewhat reserved woman. The longest - from 1956 to 1972 (16 years!) - she worked in the Ginsburg family, where three boys grew up. When already grown-up Ginsburgs were found by Maloof, they were stunned by the news that their nanny was a great photographer. Her pupils mostly talk about her through the prism of children's perception: how she brought them dead snakes from the forest, was not afraid of frogs and bats, and had picnics. In general, she was a wonderful nanny ... No wonder she devoted almost forty years to this profession.
Later, the grown-up Ginsburgs, having learned that their aged nanny Vivian was in poverty and turned out to be homeless, decided to jointly rent an apartment for her, in which she lived for many years until she got into a nursing home. She kept her property - several dozen boxes - in rented boxes. When she stopped paying rent (in the last years of her life she suffered from memory loss), her property went under the hammer.
Actually, this is the end of the biography of the nanny Vivian Mayer, and the biography of another woman begins - the great photographer of the 20th century.
Why Vivian made a secret out of her hobby is still unclear. Most likely, the relatives were skeptical about young Vivian's passion for photography, and in the future Vivian decided not to talk about her hobby.
Her serious passion for photography began when she left France and began to earn money on her own. In the early 1950s, Vivian switched from her first children's Kodak Brownie camera to a professional Rolleiflex. The work allowed her to shoot all her free time. She photographs unpretentious street scenes: children, the elderly, the poor, less often - prosperous women and men. Poor neighborhoods get into the frame, the most ordinary people who were often unaware that they were being photographed. Sometimes, in order to make a portrait, she asked permission. It was easiest for her to negotiate with the children - there are a lot of them in the pictures.
Without setting any goals for herself, Vivian Mayer captured a portrait of America in the mid-50s. Her gift for observation, sharp eye, sense of composition helped her to make unique shots. She captured American types, which are unlikely to be found today. Elegant black maids, workers, children who walk all day without adult supervision - she did not chase after something unique, did not seek to fix anomalies. Her portraits and genre scenes are just typical: but after half a century, the faces seem beautiful and spiritual, and the boring Chicago streets turned out to be filled with artifacts and sights.
She rarely spent more than one shot on a street scene. Vivian unerringly looked for unique shooting points to take a single shot and move on. Her compositional solutions are brilliant. Vivian Mayer is often compared to André Kertész. But unlike Kertesz, Vivien did not seek to show someone her work.
She photographed not only in Chicago. In 1959-1960, having received an inheritance, Vivian traveled to Southeast Asia, Italy, and Egypt. Despite the fact that she left the Ginsburg family for this time, Vivien returned to them. An important role was played by the presence of her own bath, which she turned into a dark room.
Throughout her life, she constantly made her self-portraits. Many of them have been preserved, even a monograph with Mayer's self-portraits has been published. Undoubtedly, she liked her own images. Unsmiling and strict, she did not seek to capture the richness of emotions, but was looking for interesting angles for shooting. She filmed her reflection in shop windows and mirrors, a shadow on the sand with a horseshoe crab in place of a heart. Vivian wanted to be remembered, even if it was her own. She tried to develop films with self-portraits, although many of the negatives remained undeveloped.
In the early 1970s, Mayer began shooting with color film. During this period, she was little interested in genre scenes, she became an abstract artist, photographing intricate patterns on the bags of passers-by, garbage, clusters of passers-by. Part of the archive for these years is most likely lost and will not be found. Vivian saved up not only photographic films, part of her archive was newspaper clippings, amateur video and audio recordings, and personal items. John Maloof suspects that most of the property was bought by another person and thrown out as unnecessary.
It can be considered a great success that the Mayer collection fell into the hands of 26-year-old John Maloof. The realtor turned out to be an excellent researcher who devoted his life to the work of the photographer. Maloof not only became Mayer's biographer, he constantly consults with famous photographers about her creativity. He publishes books, with his direct participation a film about Vivian was released.
In 2011, the first book "" (Vivian Maier: Street Photographer) was published, in 2012 - Vivien Maier: Out of Shadows (Vivian Maier: Out of Shadows). 16 exhibitions devoted to the work of the photographer took place in Europe and the USA.
The story of the American photographer Vivien Maier is an interesting case of fame that came to the photographer only after her death. Her carefully collected archive of almost a hundred thousand negatives was never seen, it was discovered by accident, and made a real international sensation.
A detailed and original illustration of the life of American society in the 60s and 70s, funny street scenes and surprisingly characteristic portraits do not leave anyone indifferent. In terms of professionalism, the ability to get close to the model and reveal her personality, Mayer is compared with Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander.
Art is eternal and works outlive their creators, who serve only as "guides" between creativity and the viewer. Unfortunately, Mayer's name only became known after her death, and she did not receive the recognition she deserves. Today, Vivien Meyer is glorified by the shots taken with the Rolleiflex medium format camera, with which she almost never parted. Friends called her "Mary Poppins with a camera" - Vivien worked as a governess in wealthy Chicago families.
Perhaps because of the gender and social barriers of the mid-twentieth century, a woman did not try to become famous during her lifetime - or tried, but failed. Today's researchers know very little about her personality and history. This also shows the uniqueness of the photographer - only her work speaks for her, we form an impression of the personality through the prism of talent.
Mayer's style is a careful observation of reality and an accurate "snatching" of interesting and eloquent details from the colorful canvas of American life. Through her work, we can get a complete, three-dimensional idea of how high society looked and what "breathed" high society and wealthy classes, among which the photographer lived, see what scenes unfolded on the streets and parks of Chicago, what the citizens wore and expressed their emotions. .
Mayer's photographs are not impartial illustrations, but formed plots that show the author as an extraordinary storyteller, bright, with a sense of humor and an active social position. Vivien shot at least 200 films a year, developing them in her room (she turned it into a photo lab) - this is the level of a full-fledged professional. At the same time, she also had a main job. She was not going to change it for a career as a photographer, but she carefully systematized and stored the archive. It was discovered completely by accident.
Accidental discovery, posthumous fame and legal scandals
In 2007, 26-year-old Chicago resident John Maloof decided to write a book about his hometown. A professional real estate agent, he happened upon a warehouse sale where he decided to buy some unowned boxes that were being disposed of due to non-payment of space. After paying $400, he received over a hundred thousand shot films and negatives and decided to scan them and develop the photographs. Looking at the finished pictures, he immediately realized that he had a treasure in front of him.
The archive contained superb street photography, 3,000 photographic prints, amateur documentaries on 8-inch and 16-inch film, and tape-recorded interviews with Chicagoans. In addition to the main part, bought by John, there were other pictures in the archive - they were sold to Ron Slattery and Randy Prow. They posted several photos on their blogs, but did not cause a public outcry.
Everything changed when Maloof posted the photos on Flickr. After posting a few pictures on a reputable photoblog, he immediately received about two hundred offers - he was asked to organize exhibitions, make a documentary about the author and tell about her story. John bought the remaining parts of the archive from the co-owners and became the owner of more than 90% of the images and the rights to publish them.
Maloof had to spend a lot of effort to find out who took the photographs that caused such a stir among professionals. Mayer's name was written on one of the boxes John bought. He began to look for relatives and acquaintances of the photographer and was able to contact two families in which she worked as a governess. One of them gave Maloof Vivien's personal belongings - boxes with newspaper clippings, developed photographs and photographic equipment, photo albums that belonged to her, notes and payment documents. According to them and the stories of the pupils, it was possible to restore information about the photographer, since John did not find her living relatives.
Maloof started organizing exhibitions of the photo artist. The first one took place in Norway in 2010, then expositions opened in America and other countries of Europe and Asia. A year later, a book about Mayer, Out of Shadows, was published, and three years later, in 2014, Maloof was sued to protect the rights of the intended heir.
Attorney David Diehl received information that Mayer's cousin Frans Belle lives in France, who, under US law, has the right to her archive. The lawyer demanded to stop the commercial distribution of the photo and said that the pictures were being used illegally. Despite the fact that the current owners of the archive bought the rights from Vivien's found second cousin, Sylvia Jossen, they had to join the lawsuit. One of the reasons for the confusing situation with Mayer's legacy is the lack of knowledge of her biography.
Biography of Vivien Meyer: what the world knows about the brilliant but mysterious reporter
Little is known about the photographer, who was born in New York in 1926. She was the daughter of an Austrian and a Frenchwoman, all her childhood traveling between America, Europe and the village of Saint Bonnet-en-Chansor in the Alps, where she lived with her mother. English language was not native to Vivienne, she fully mastered it already in the American period of her life (according to rumors, for this she went to the theater a lot). After her parents divorced in 1930, Vivien began taking photography lessons from a friend of her mother, professional photographer, spent the years of World War II in France, and then, at the age of twenty-five, returned to the United States. In the 1960s, apparently on the income from the sale of a house in the village, she traveled through Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia - from Egypt to Taiwan and Indonesia.
For five years she lived in New York and worked in a candy store, and then changed her profession to work as a governess and moved to Chicago. Mayer lived there until her death, raising children in wealthy families for 40 years. Vivien lived next to one of her pupils for 14 years. The Ginzburg family did not stop communicating with Mayer until her death and even gave her a small apartment in a prestigious area of the city. In addition to this family, Vivienne worked for the wealthy Raymonds and even for the famous American presenter Phil Donahue.
Meyer never parted with the camera, filming social stories about low-income residents of Chicago and high society. While walking with children, she photographed street onlookers, passers-by and wealthy acquaintances of her employers posed for her. Always in men's trousers, a wide-brimmed hat and formal shoes, she walked around the city with a camera and worked continuously. Pupils recall that she adhered to socialist views, leaned towards feminism and always sincerely told people the truth in the eye.
The photographer died in 2009, in a nursing home, where she ended up due to a head injury from a fall on the ice. She died shortly before her triumph. We will never know how Mayer would react to the 100% well-deserved fame that came.
For outside world Vivian Mayer was only a nanny and housekeeper from Chicago. However, her hidden talent as a photographer was only recognized after her death in 2009, when John Maloof bought 100,000 of her negatives at auction and published a book.
Mayer has spent most of her life roaming the streets of Chicago with a Rolleiflex camera and printing amazing black and white pictures that conveyed all aspects of American life in the middle of the last century.
Vivian did not receive a penny for her photographs, but calling her an amateur simply does not turn her tongue. She did not show her photographs to anyone, no one even knew about her hobby. At the same time, she left a real photo-report archive, according to which it is now possible to compose lectures for students about the life, fashion, traditions and culture of that time.
Glory to the amateur photographer Vivian Mayer (1926-2009) came only after her death. Moreover, the discovery of her work has become one of the most significant events in the world of modern photography.
For almost 40 years, Vivian worked as a governess in various families. Her favorite hobby was taking pictures of street everyday life. All of her shots were taken with a good medium format Rolleiflex camera.
During the year, Vivian Maier shot almost 200 films - that is, she actually worked like a good professional.
The publication of the works of the photographer, it seems, was not at all interested. But nevertheless, she carefully kept her huge archive, numbering more than 100,000 negatives.
This gigantic collection, quite by accident, was bought by historian John Maloof at one of the auctions for only $400.
Reliable facts about the life of Vivian Mayer are known very little today. Until the end, the question of even the place of her birth remains unclear.
Some sources say that Vivian was born in France, according to other sources she is a native of New York.
Her mother, Maria Jossod, was French and her father, Charles Mayer, was Austrian. As a child, Vivian moved several times from France to the United States, but where she lived while in France is unknown.
In 1951, when Vivian was 25 years old, she moved to New York and worked for a while in one of the pastry shops. In 1956, she found a job as a nanny and devoted the next 40 years to this activity, and for 14 years she worked in the same family.
She spent her weekends walking the streets and taking pictures. Between 1959 and 1960, Vivian traveled to many countries, visited Thailand, Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan and other countries. And in every city she visited, Vivian took a lot of photos.
Over time, the archive grew rapidly, and Vivian always transported all the boxes in which the materials were stored with her to a new place of work.
So, one of her employers says that he counted 200 boxes that the new governess brought with her.
In addition to photographs and negatives, Vivian kept many old newspapers and audio recordings of conversations she had with some of the people in her photographs.
On the films from her archive there are many completely plotless clips - for example, shooting from a train window.
Vivian Mayer liked to wear huge wide-brimmed hats and men's trousers. She was a feminist and shared socialist ideas.
Her character was very reserved, but at the same time, in some miraculous way, she managed to get along well with children.
Towards the end of her life, Vivian Mayer became homeless for a while and lived on welfare.
But the children she once raised, having learned of her plight, raised funds for her, bought her an apartment and paid her bills.
In 2008, at the age of 82, Vivian slipped on the ice, fell and hit her head badly.
She never recovered from her injury and died a year later in a nursing home.
In Chicago, there is such a service: for a moderate fee, lockers take for storage all sorts of things that the owners have nowhere to put, but it’s a pity to throw them away.
As soon as the owners stop paying for the storage of their "treasures", they are immediately put up for auction.
At one such auction in 2007, 26-year-old real estate agent John Maloof bought a huge box of old negatives for a small price. Maloof made a blind purchase and at first did not attach any importance to it.
But when he started developing the films, he quickly realized their true value. He again went to the same auction and bought the rest of the boxes, which contained several thousand undeveloped films.
John Maloof whole year I sorted through these boxes until, finally, I came across in one of them an envelope with the name of the owner of this archive.
By searching the Internet for "Vivian Maier", John Maloof was able to find only a short obituary - there was no other information. Then Maloof began to search for families in which Vivian Meyer once worked.
So he managed to collect several more boxes of newspaper clippings made by Vivian, the photographic equipment with which she worked, and many developed photographs.
True, now one can find statements that John Maloof knew from the very beginning who the pictures belonged to, that he bought them at a time when Vivian was still alive, and that he perfectly understood what value he acquired. But this is just one version.
We recently talked about a talented photographer from Leningrad, who all her life considered her abilities insignificant, and therefore thousands of her photographs were discovered only a few years after her death. The history of world photography knows another talented woman photographer who hid her gift from others all her life - this is Vivian Mayer.
The name of the photographer was unexpectedly discovered by former realtor John Maloof, who in 2007 bought boxes of negatives at an auction where they were put up for sale due to non-payment for storage services. In total, the archive contained more than 100,000 negatives, partially undeveloped, and about 3,000 photographic prints. In addition, the collection contained amateur films on 8 mm and 16 mm film, as well as a large number of tape-recorded street interviews. Already in October 2009, the name Vivian Mayer became famous after the publication of photos on the Flickr photo hosting, but their author passed away six months before this event.
It was not easy to find out anything about Vivian's life, because the relatives who knew her during her lifetime could not be found.
Vivian Dorothy Mayer was born in New York on February 1, 1926. She grew up in France, but then returned to the States. At first she worked in a candy store, and at the age of 30 she moved to Chicago, where she worked as a nanny and nurse for 40 years. Walking with children around the city all day long, Meyer constantly photographed street life, without showing the finished photos to anyone. Thanks to this lifestyle, the photo artist received the nickname “Mary Poppins with a camera” among urban residents.
Even though Vivian didn't get vocational education, but only took photography lessons from a friend, her pictures amaze with their high level: shooting technique, choice of plot, unusual light, etc. A feature of her style is also the fact that she managed to get close to her characters almost closely.
Shortly before Mayer's death, the Ginsburg family, for whom she worked in the 1960s and who never cut ties with their nanny, bought her a small apartment in a good neighborhood. The last year of her life, after a head injury received on the street from a fall on ice, passed in a nursing home, where she died on April 21, 2009.
Interesting street photographerVivian Dorothy Mayer(Vivian Dorothea Maier) was born in New York on February 1, 1926. She then grew up in France but later returned to the United States. Mayer worked as a nanny in Chicago and took over 100,000 photographs during this period. These photographs convey her early vision and idea of people, cityscapes and views of the street. The most important aspect for Mayer was the fact that almost throughout her life her work was not exhibited or evaluated anywhere. In fact, no one knew about the existence of such a talented street photographer.
Only at the end of 2007, the work of Vivian Mayer was discovered by a local Chicago historian and collector, John Maloof. After that, her work began to rapidly spread throughout the network. Numerous awards and exhibitions around the world followed, but, unfortunately, on April 21, 2009, Vivian Mayer passed away.
After returning from France, Mayer worked in a sweatshop. At the age of 25, she took a job as a nanny for a family of 14 and often roamed the streets of Chicago taking portraits of people with her precious Rolleiflex camera. John Maloof accidentally discovered Mayer's work through an auction. With his highly artistic eyes, he saw brilliant photographs from a completely different era.
What makes Vivian Maier's work different
If you think about it, the most exciting thing about these photographs is the choice of subjects for portrait shooting and masterful lighting.
The manifestation of art in street photography is perhaps the only way that everyone can admire your work. And there is a feeling that Mayer's photographs of this genre are easily understood by an admiring viewer.
Like many modern street photographers, Mayer not only filled the frame, but also paid attention to the quality of the light and emphasized the dignity of the person depicted.
You can feel the courage of the photographer who pushes her out of her comfort zone to meet strangers on the street. Building relationships within photography is also one of the facets of her work.
The most important portraits are those that stand out in a photographer's portfolio. Mayer's work is bold and brilliant. Her street portraits retain their essence and characteristic charm.
The photographer's work style is inspiring. She spoke to the subjects to capture them. Not everyone thinks about this detail these days. It is a form of humble appreciation and a sense of comfort that could be given to the subject.
The composition in these photos is simple and elegant. Vivian Maier's work is a master class in positioning objects in a frame.
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