PRESS RELEASE
Exhibition Vivian Maier. The discovery of a photographer
27 June – 17 August 2014
”She was a humanist in the best tradition. She showed real life, and that’s so difficult to do.”
Photographer Mary Ellen Mark
She loved Buster Keaton films, read a lot of (auto) biographies, collected thousands of newspaper
clippings, liked to travel and earned a living as a governess for well-to-do families in Chicago. We
cannot find out much more about the life of Vivian Maier for the time being. In the end, she turned out
to have been a good photographer who went out into the streets to photograph scenes from everyday
life. Those efforts yielded thousands of photos of Chicago and New York in the 1950s and 1960s, from
her many travels and street views with a great predilection for children and the less well-off.
Street photographer before the term was invented
Vivian Maier’s photographs appeal to many people. They are easy to understand. Maier photographed
subjects which have now become the favourite terrain of amateur photographers with mobile
telephones and digital cameras. The fact that she took her pictures at a time when technology was
less advanced and far more expensive, makes her work particularly significant. Her photos are
compared with those of Diane Arbus, Lisette Model and Garry Winogrand. Some also see links with
French masters such as Robert Doisneau, André Kertesz, Brassaï or Henri Cartier-Bresson. Whether
she was also inspired by them remains guesswork. It is still unclear why Maier took photographs and
where she developed her style.
The fact that so little is known about her makes her story mysterious and intriguing. Her photos rewrite
her story, as it were. The answer to many questions is still pending. Why did Vivian Maier photograph?
Why did she not share her photos with the public? Would she be pleased with the great interest
shown in her work? What did she herself consider the best images?
In New York, Vivian as a child and her mother lived together with Jeanne Bertrand, a French-American
studio photographer. Perhaps that is when Vivian developed a love for photography. As far as we
know, Vivian Maier had no photography training. She knew no other important photographers from
that period and photographed only for herself. She was self-taught, with a sharp sense for observation
and composition.
French Alps
Vivian Maier had a French mother and an Austrian father. Administrative sources show that a few
years after she was born, Vivian and her mother went to Saint-Bonnet-en-Champsaur, a small village
in the High Alps in France, the region where her maternal grandparents were born.
In France, she photographed the people, the mounts and the surroundings of Saint-Bonnet-enChampsaur, using a Kodak Brownie box camera. Later she bought a Rolleiflex. In the mid-1970s she
switched to a Leica and experimented also with colour photos and 8 mm film. When she was about 25
years old, she moved back to New York City.
Vivian Maier
Attempts are being made to reconstruct Vivian Maier’s life on the basis of numerous interviews with
classmates in France, children for whom she had been a governess and other people who knew her.
She was a strong and independent woman who earned her own living and travelled a lot on her own,
which was very unusual for a woman at that time. Vivian Maier was rather introverted. She kept her
private life to herself and had few friends. The children whom she looked after describe her as
generous and open-minded, but cold.
During the day and on her free evenings, Maier would take to the street to photograph everyday life
around her. These outings yielded thousands of photographs. With her camera, and the way in which
she looked at the world through it, she was able to photograph people on the street without being
noticed, almost invisible. There was no eye contact, she looked at the world through her lens.
Maier took part in life through her camera but also showed us the world through that same camera.
She used almost as a diary. We can in fact reconstruct a typical day in the life of Vivian Maier through
her negatives. The camera accompanied her everywhere, on walks, in the car, on the train, to the
shop on the bicycle, etc. Maier did not, however, photograph in an impulsive manner. The negatives
she left behind show that she thought every photograph carefully through. Only on very exceptional
occasions did she photograph her subject more than once.
Chicago and New York in the 1950s and 1960s
Vivian Maier took most of her photos in the 1950s and 1960s. The segregation system in the US came
under increasing pressure in that post World War II period. Blacks in the south challenged the
authorities increasingly more openly through non-violent actions. The black civil rights movement with
Martin Luther King as its most prominent leader gained more and more support and sympathy in white
circles as well. 1963 was King’s year. In May of that year, there were massive demonstrations in
Birmingham, Alabama, and in August the world famous march on Washington. That is where King
gave his “I have a dream” speech before 250,000 Americans. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson
signed a new Civil Rights Act which outlawed discrimination particularly in education and on the labour
market, but did not yet spell the end of social and economic discrimination yet.
The struggle against Communism raged in full fury at that time as well. Senator Joseph McCarthy
organised a real persecution of anyone who could have anything to do with Communism. The Cold
War set the international agenda. Conflicts such as the Korean War, the Cuba missile crisis and the
war in Vietnam pitted the US and the Soviet Union against each other.
Maier’s photos provide a picture of the zeitgeist of that period: the streets of New York and Chicago
when the American economy was still booming. Portraits of people at the margins of society: the
homeless, outcast, migrants, blacks and children, many children. Children that she looked after as a
governess, but also numerous other children, playing, crying, dreaming, on the street, together with
their mothers or parents. Her photos offer a glimpse of Chicago and New York in the 1950s and
1960s.
Governess
Vivian Maier worked the longest for the Gensburg family in Chicago, nearly seventeen years. She did
not have her own dwelling and at the end of her life, the Gensburg family rented a flat for her because
she was unable to afford it on her own. She put her furniture, household effects, and rolls of films in
lockers in storage facilities. The contents of those lockers were sold when she was no longer able to
pay her rent. It is assumed that Vivian Maier was then admitted to hospital. She died in 2009.
Lots of undeveloped films
The photos were discovered accidentally by John Maloof in 2007. He sold negatives and photos via
the Internet and was looking for interesting historical photos of a certain neighbourhood in Chicago.
During his searches, he bought a batch of undeveloped rolls of film in an auction house in Chicago,
and that set the ball rolling. The reactions were overwhelming and the search for Vivian Maier was
under way. Maloof discovered her identity only after her death.
John Maloof and an art collector from Chicago, Jeffrey Goldstein, own a lot of Vivian Maier’s work and
are trying to piece together her biography. In the meantime, John Maloof, together with documentary
maker Charlie Siskel, produced a documentary entitled ‘Finding Vivian Maier’ on the search for the
photographer.
The discovery of a photographer
A selection from the extensive archive of some 150,000 negatives, 3,000 prints and 2,000 film rolls
was made for the Vivian Maier exhibition. In the medieval refectory of Saint Peter’s Abbey, Historische
Huizen Gent exhibits 120 gelatine silver prints and also some colour photos from original negatives
and slides, as well as some super 8 mm films that Maier made in the 1960s and 1970s. She also left
hundreds of self-portraits, reflections of herself in mirrors or shop windows, or her shadow on the
ground or walls. She also asked others to take photos of her. Some of those photos are also shown at
the exhibition. The selection was made by DiChroma in cooperation with John Maloof and the Howard
Greenberg Gallery in New York.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are still hundreds of undeveloped films and the photos are still
far from being fully digitised or scanned. The BBC made an interesting documentary entitled ‘Vivian
Maier, Who took Nanny’s pictures?’ in 2013, which can be viewed free of charge during the exhibition.
Biography
1926 Vivian Maier is born in New York on 1 February. Her father is of Austro-Hungarian origin and her
mother is French, born in the Alps.
1930 Her father leaves the family home. Vivian Maier and her mother share an apartment with the
photographer Jeanne Bertrand.
1932 They leave for France and settle in Saint-Bonnet-en-Champsaur in the High Alps.
1938 They return to live in New York.
1950 Vivian Maier goes to France again to claim an inheritance from her great aunt; she would use
this money to finance her travels. She produced numerous landscapes and portraits of the inhabitants
of Champsaur valley using box or folding type cameras.
1951 She travels to Cuba, Canada and California. She starts working as a governess to earn a living.
Ca. 1952 She buys her first Rolleiflex. She is interested in daily life in the streets of New York. She
also shoots portraits: children in her charge, but also strangers and some celebrities she comes
across.
1955 She travels to and works in Los Angeles.
1956 She moves definitively to Chicago, where she is employed by the Gensburg family, for whom
she would work for 17 years. She sets up a laboratory in the private bathroom placed at her disposal
in the house.
1959-1960 Vivian Maier travels around the world, staying in particular in the Philippines, Asia, India,
Yemen, the Near East, southern Europe, and then goes to France for one last time.
1970-1980 She shoots photographs in colour with her Leica as well as 8 mm and 16 mm footage.
Vivian Maier takes her last photographs.
1990-2000 She puts her sizeable collection of books, press clippings, films and prints in storage. It
would be seized some years later to settle unpaid rent. She is virtually without employment and her
resources are meagre. The Gensburg family rents an apartment to house her.
2009 She dies in Chicago on 21 April.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
The exhibition can be visited from Friday, 27 June to Sunday, 17 August 2014, in the Refectory of
Sint-Pietersabdij [Saint Peter’s Abbey].
Admission
Individual visitors: € 6
Reduced rate: € 4.5
Under 26 years of age: € 2
Under 18 years of age: free
Combination Ticket: Vivian Maier. The discovery of a Photographer and World Press Photo:
Individual visitors: € 9 / Reduced Rate: € 7
Press contact
Fabienne Gros
T +32 (0)9 243 97 52 / +32 (0)476 86 34 53
E fabienne.gros@gent.be
Historische Huizen Gent [Ghent Historical Houses]
Sint-Pietersabdij
9 Sint-Pietersplein, 9000 Ghent
T +32 (0)9 243 97 30
E historischehuizen@gent.be
www.sintpietersabdijgent.be / www.gravensteengent.be
Follow us on
sintpietersabdijgent / @historischehuiz
Person in charge:
Annelies Storms
Alderwoman for Culture, Tourism and Events, City of Ghent
Stadhuis
Botermarkt 1
9000 Ghent
T 09 266 51 40
E schepen.storms@gent.be