Vivian Maier

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Vivian Dorothy Maier (born February 1, 1926 in New York , † April 21, 2009 in Chicago ) was an American citizen with French characteristics, nanny, housekeeper and amateur or leisure photographer. Maier gained notoriety shortly after her death through the unintentional auction of the legacy of an unusually large number of black and white photographs that was discovered by chance .

Research shows an eventful and difficult childhood against the background of a broken immigrant family and a less well-off life in unskilled employment in adulthood. Maier's passion and exclusively private affair was her obsessively driven, discreet photographic documentation of life in the streets of the big cities of New York and Chicago, accompanied at an advanced age by the compulsive storage of randomly collected junk , mountains of old newspapers and thousands of exposed, but undeveloped film rolls .

Apart from their status as culturally and historically significant contemporary documents over the second half of the 20th century, Maier's pictures are currently assigned to the unspecific category of street photography and, in addition to the media dissemination of an allegedly “mysterious” vita, Maier’s persistently great interest from gallery owners and lovers of the genre worldwide .

Maier's existence was that of a determined loner; She kept herself and her special activities out of the public eye throughout her life. Critical voices therefore criticize the legally and morally questionable, posthumously interest-driven legends and the commercialization of their person and their images.

Life

Early childhood and family background

Vivian Maier was born in 1926 in the Bronx - a multicultural and highly immigrant area in northern New York City - the daughter of a US citizen and baptized a Catholic . The father was the technician Charles Maier, naturalized in the United States and descended from a noble family of Austrian emigrants , the mother Maria Maier nee. Jaussaud was born in France, worked as a domestic servant and was also naturalized through marriage in 1919.

Charles Maier's aristocratic character seems to have suffered from the anonymity, which is not customary for him, that the Bronx brought with it with its steady stream of immigrants. Eyewitness accounts show that he was a selfish, aggressive heavy drinker and indebted gambler who permanently troubled his family, including Vivian's six-year-old brother Carl (Charles Maier Jr.). After a difficult and early broken marriage with frequent separation times, Charles Maier is said to have left the family for good around 1930. Daughter Vivian was born into a substantially destroyed family during these phases of separation and brief coexistence. Vivian Maier's birth certificate lists her mother's name as "Marie Jaussaud Justin", a name that is not noted either when she was baptized or in the family chronicle; this tendency to tweak one's own name in order to possibly conceal a reputation perceived as negative, would later also appear frequently with Vivian Maier in adulthood.

According to a 1930 census, four-year-old Vivian lived with her mother in a household in Boston ; Maria Maier-Jaussaud had found a place to stay there with her two children. At this address the French sculptor and portrait photographer Jeanne Bertrand was given as head of the household ; Bertrand, honored for her artistic work by the Boston Globe in 1902 on the front page, came from Agnières-en-Dévoluy , a small community of shepherds in the alpine south-east of France , about 20 miles west of Saint-Julien-en-Champsaur , the birthplace of Vivian's mother.

Maria Maier-Jaussaud and her children found an important caregiver as well as moral and financial support in their mother and grandmother Eugénie Jaussaud, who proved to be a clever, prudent person and a kind of warm-hearted and responsible matriarch in difficult times . After the quarrels and legal disputes over the maintenance of Maria Maier-Jaussaud and her children Carl and Vivian escalated, she kept her distance from her daughter and looked after her grandchildren in a committed manner. As a teenager, Eugénie Jaussaud emigrated to New York in 1901 with a cousin of Jeanne Bertrand. In her homeland in the south of France, she became pregnant when she was a minor and could only give birth to her daughter Maria out of wedlock - which was felt at the time as a shame - because the child's father, Nicolas Baille, a farmhand and farm laborer, did not confess to her, still wanted to recognize paternity. Baille was shunned by the village community because of his behavior towards Eugénie Jaussaud and her daughter; Years later he still certified his paternity; decades later, after his and Vivian Maier's death, the late recognition was to play a certain role in the legal dispute over the copyrights of Vivian Maier's photographic legacy (→ legal disputes ). The uncertainty of her future as a single young mother, affected by poverty and feelings of outcast and shame, finally led Eugénie Jaussaud to leave France with a cousin of Jeanne Bertrand. Her goal were friends from her former homeland who had previously emigrated to the United States in order to find a better life there. It is also thanks to this environment that one of Bertrand's uncle financed the departure of Eugénie Jaussaud and Bertrand's cousin.

Eugénie Jaussaud was initially unable to raise the additional money for her daughter's departure, so Maria had to stay behind in France and find care with her sister Marie-Florentine Jaussaud, who had remained single and childless. One of Eugénie Jaussaud's employers reciprocated out of appreciation for his capable housekeeper by enabling Maria a ship passage to New York in 1914; Mother Eugénie and daughter Maria were reunited after more than a decade of separation.

Her new life in New York turned out to be difficult for Maria Maier-Jaussaud because she had neither language skills nor training. After the breakup of their marriage, she was reluctant to take on sparingly paid temporary jobs in the looming global economic crisis and, among other things, worked from time to time as a household helper for the gentlemen who she got through her mother. Because of their prestigious position, Maria Maier-Jaussaud and her children came into contact with the (often lavish) wealth, culture and glamor of high-ranking families in New York, but always in the knowledge that they did not belong.

Childhood in France

Under the impression of broken family ties and the economic hardship at the time of the Great Depression in America in the 1930s, Maria Maier decided to return to her birthplace Saint-Julien with her six-year-old daughter Vivian in 1932. According to reports from their relatives, both initially lived with Maria Maier's aunt Marie-Florentine on the Jaussaud family's Beauregard farm . After an alleged physical assault on Vivian by an intimate acquaintance of Marie-Florentine, which was not openly expressed, Maria and Vivian Maier moved into modest, probably somewhat shabby accommodation in the neighboring community of Saint-Bonnet-en-Champsaur in 1934 and lived largely on the support of Vivian's grandmother Eugénie Jaussaud. Vivian Maier attended school in Saint-Bonnet after a preparatory course and was soon fluent in French. The villagers remembered that she was the focus of the local children and stood out with exceptional energy and creative ideas; one of their preferences was to join the boys in their outdoor adventure games. A few photographs have been preserved from this period in which the mother captured a few moments from her daughter's life.

Return to the United States

At the end of 1938, the usual life of Vivian Maier, who had just turned 12, experienced another sudden change, because her mother traveled back to New York with her. The main reasons for this are unclear and somewhat complex. Maria Maier had apparently not been able to regain a foothold in the region of her origin, and although she could not find a job due to a lack of education and motivation, she gave the people in her village the impression of demanding thinking and the tendency to live beyond their means. Her return to France was also overshadowed by earlier experiences: the circumstances of her illegitimate birth and the resulting extreme sensitivity to her reputation, the early years of separation from mother Eugénie Jaussaud, the subsequent time in the care of Aunt Marie-Florentine and the dispute with him, triggered by the ominous attack on daughter Vivian. Concern about Vivian's brother Carl, who was left without a father and left behind by his mother, can be cited as further clues; and finally the situation of the destabilization of Europe triggered by Hitler's Germany , accompanied by the threat of war and a wave of emigration to North America .

Vivian Maier's existence as a teenager was influenced by considerable tensions in the fatherless family. Her brother suffered from depression and used drugs, led an unsteady life and was temporarily imprisoned for it. In addition, due to years of estrangement, he could not meet his sister's need for protective closeness and avoided her. Mother Maria Maier was perceived by her children as self-centered and lazy and increasingly lost self-control. Vivian Maier tried to escape the desolate family circumstances by starting to take her life into her own hands through a kind of self- education . Again, it was grandmother Eugénie Jaussaud who , through her extensive contacts, ensured that her granddaughter could move to Queens for a while to find accommodation in a boarding school for girls . Under the unofficial tutelage of this family, which supported children from difficult backgrounds, Vivian Maier began to learn English, went to theaters and cinemas, devoured newspapers, magazines and books on art, photography, film, pop culture, history and politics. She was soon perceived as more cultured and more knowledgeable than appropriate to her origins and schooling. However, due to underprivileged living conditions, she was denied the chance of a regular high school degree and a degree from the start.

Adulthood

After the end of the Second World War , Vivian Maier, financed by a small inheritance from her grandmother Eugénie Jaussaud, who died in 1948, traveled alone to France as a young woman to look after the auction of the Domaine de Beauregard in Saint-Julien; the estate of the Jaussaud family had meanwhile been inherited from her great-aunt Marie-Florentine. Even before she left, there was a definitive falling out with her mother over this inheritance. At the beginning of 1951, Maier returned to New York at the age of 25 and worked in a sweatshop for the next four years under low-wage conditions . Her next stop was Los Angeles from 1955 to 1956 , where Maier earned her living as a nanny before moving to the northern suburbs of the Chicago metropolitan area , the places where she spent her entire subsequent life.

Vivian Maier began to photograph passionately while she was still in France; From 1949 onwards, she is said to have taken more than 100,000 photos in almost 40 years, in which she mainly captured urban life on the streets of New York and Chicago, including innumerable pictures of herself. To the everyday life of people in their homes and to trace living conditions with the camera, between 1959 and 1960 she undertook a (renewed) trip to Los Angeles and the southwestern United States , followed by an extended five-month trip around the world, which she visited, among other places, in Yemen , Egypt , and East Asia last time to the places of her childhood in the south of France. She financed her travels very likely with the proceeds of the property sold.

From then on, Vivian Maier earned her living in Chicago as a nanny and housekeeper until the 1990s, just as her mother and grandmother had already done this wage earning. Not only in her free time, but often while she was looking after the children entrusted to her, Maier was walking the streets of Chicago and was constantly taking photos with a two-eyed Rolleiflex . Another field of activity was filming people in the city traffic, and every now and then she recorded conversations about primarily political events on film or tape, which she conducted with people who were photographed by her.

Maier was paid little as an assistant, but she was able to live with her well-off employers and spare a lot of time to take photos. The reports of some of these families for whom Maier worked at the time are essentially based on interviews with two → documentary films . They portray Maier as a withdrawn and spartan loner who has no deeper confidential contact with other people. Nobody was allowed to find out about their past, their worries, wishes and goals. She is said to have made a special secret of her privacy by rigorously defending her accommodation from prying eyes at times.

In addition, the depictions of the families sometimes draw very different images: “For some, she was familiar with 'Viv' or 'Vivian', for others' Ms. Mayer and nothing else ', some remember a loving and imaginative woman, for others she was a strict, at times even terrifying and cruel supervisor. " John Maloof - one of those who discovered a large part of Maier's photographs at a foreclosure auction and a little later began exploring their lives - summarizes the accounts of the families he specifically interviewed in his own way: “She learned English by going to the theater, which she loved. She wore a men's jacket, men's shoes, and mostly a large hat. She was always taking photos and not showing them to anyone. ”In the description of her personality, derStandard.at from Vienna becomes clearer and says,“ She marched around like a Nazi, with arms flailing and going in a goose step. She was noticeably tall for a woman, often wearing (men's) clothes and a hat. She spoke with a French accent, even though she was born in New York. She wrote her name, Vivian Maier, in every imaginable variant - and if she didn't want to name any, she signed it with V. Smith. ”The Schweizer Tages-Anzeiger highlights the distant relationship between Maier, who remained unmarried and childless for a lifetime :“ Some of her charges remember that she warned against men; if you touched it surprisingly, it could become palpable. "

Ann Marks and Francoise Perron, who published extensive private research in addition to access to official documents, share the assessment that in view of Maier's problematic family past, their emphatically exercised restraint and playing with false names could have been self-protection for themselves in the families , with which she had found work and a certain confidence not to frivolously discredit herself. In addition, for many reasons Maier's biography does not correspond to the image of an eccentric, mysterious person and posthumously discovered artist who was misunderstood throughout her life, as is claimed in a distorting way. Rather, she seemed to have had a clear mission to grasp the truth for herself and to find serious topics that corresponded to her social, political and cultural convictions. In addition to the well-known recordings, she also captured ubiquitous political conflicts that pervade public life - such as the protests against the Vietnam War or the Watergate affair and the overthrow of US President Nixon - in hundreds of images. Talent and intellectual resources made it possible for her to defy the influences of family constraints from childhood and adolescence and to shape a consistently self-directed and self-determined life according to her ideals. She cultivated outward appearances, such as her clothes, which looked stale for American metropolitan conditions at the time, through her own simple look with sensible shoes, oversized and practical coats and slouch hats; just like her rustic cuisine, immediacy and economy were typical of Maier's formative period of French country life.

As soon as the children she was looking after reached adulthood, Maier often relocated and looked for work. This circumstance and the associated financial bottlenecks forced them to neglect their own development or the development of films and prints that they had commissioned, and to limit themselves to storing negatives and exposed, undeveloped film rolls in addition to photography. In this way Maier never got to see thousands of her pictures herself.

Probably as a result of emotional deprivation of a decidedly self-related identity, Maier developed a considerable passion over time in collecting and storing objects randomly picked up on the street, old tickets, receipts and other paperwork, which in relation to newspapers became downright immoderate . Susanne Mayer gave an impression of Maier's “ collecting madness ” on Zeit Online : “She collected (unread) newspapers until the bars of her servants' room bent, hoarded boxes and cans, books, suitcases, leather chests, boxes, secured with tape, in which she hid letters and bills, receipts, newspaper articles. Collections of knick-knacks. Brooches. Maier was, as even the most amiable of her employers admit, a messie in view of the boxes, cans and piles of paper that grew down the stairs and conquered the garages . "

End of life

Between the late 1990s and the first few years of the new millennium, Vivian Maier was homeless for a while and had to stay afloat from social security . Her situation improved when three former protégés, whom she had looked after in the 1950s (→ Discovery ), made an apartment available to her and paid her bills. On the other hand, Maier's estate contained a number of unpaid social security checks, which suggests that she was increasingly indifferent to her livelihood.

The last reports from her life are lost in the picture of a woman suffering from health problems who sometimes spent her day alone on park benches and still carefully observed her surroundings without taking photos. In 2008 she slipped on black ice and sustained a head injury from which she no longer recovered. In spring 2009 Vivian Maier died almost destitute and without family support at the age of 83 in a nursing home .

A tape cassette that she herself reviewed shows that Maier, free of any accusation or regret, had no illusions about her life or life itself: “We have to make room for other people. It's a bike - you jump up and ride to the end, and then someone else has the opportunity to ride to the end and someone else takes over from you. There is nothing new under the sun. "

photography

Although the sheer number of photos over the years has by far exceeded any ordinary measure, Vivian Maier apparently did not show anyone even a single one of her prints - she kept her photographic work under lock and key all her life, about serious ambitions to publish her photographs in any form To consciously face a public debate and commercialization through this, nothing is known.

A brief summary of the description of the motifs that Maier captured in her (currently known) photographs can be found on the Deutschlandfunk Kultur website : “Vivian Maier captured what came before her lens: the architecture of New York (in the 1950s Years) and later Chicago (until the 90s), industrial plants, elevated railways, city dwellers rushing through street canyons, people on the fringes of society, children playing, pigeons in the gutter, everyday scenes and repeatedly self-portraits . Vivian Maier haunts her work in reflective shop windows, reflective surfaces, as shadows or shades. ” In Maier's pictures, Spiegel Online particularly emphasizes her affection for children:“ Laughing, dancing on the street, carefree, completely absorbed in their game, others the hand of their parents, some dressed up and exhibited, others lost and sad. And still others look seriously and confidently into the camera, regardless of whether the photographer comes close to them in a portrait or whether she shows her in torn clothes and dreary surroundings. ”From the point of view of an art historian , Meret Ernst writes on the occasion of the photography exhibition in Zurich 2016: “The precise observer of social inequality perceives just as precisely how even children [...] are shaped by their origins in their habitus and expression. Your view of women is softer, more understanding than that of men. Her preferred excerpt is the medium long shot, she catches people from higher social classes - concealed and unnoticed - sometimes from below, while those who have fallen from the social network are supervised. But she prefers to point the camera directly at the sitter. ”Another characteristic feature - in addition to the different angles and distances that Maier carefully took on each scene in order to trigger it with a trained eye at the decisive moment - was her will to be artistic Design and experiment; the online edition of the British Independent clarifies: "There are also more formal, almost abstract experiments with light and lines."

Such idiosyncratic portraits of people from the Maier region of French relatives as well as motifs from landscapes from the southern French Alps are among her earliest pictures in a series of over a thousand pictures taken in France. Among them are a number of blurry and incorrectly exposed negatives from repeatedly repeated shots of the same motif, evidence of Maier's understandable efforts to acquire practical knowledge of camera technology through trial and error.

At that time, Maier already possessed extensive knowledge of contemporary photography from numerous magazines and books. She knew the styles, methodology and names of prominent photo artists whose works almost certainly had an inspirational influence on her own photography. According to Maloof, some related negatives from his collection are said to have been created in 1949 and thus testify to the first steps in Maier's photography. However, this is being questioned on the basis of passport entries, including by Maier expert Pamela Bannos, who, as a professor at Northwestern University , uses forensic and art-theoretical methods to gain a scientifically sound understanding of the subject.

The basis of Vivian Maier's photographs, which are mainly formulated by galleries and public media, is also a relatively small and targeted selection: a few hundred out of a hundred thousand motifs. At the moment, no one can provide unequivocal information about the nature of what is by far the largest part of your work - even initially not generally accessible (→ reception ).

The cameras used by Maier and preserved as exhibits include an exceptionally simple Kodak "Brownie" amateur or box camera with Tri-X roll film type 120 in 6 × 9 recording format . From 1952 onwards, she preferred incomparably more expensive and well-known for professional demands two-lens Rolleiflex medium format cameras in different versions (recognizable in some mirrored self-portraits) as preferred recording devices; With their properties for largely silent, inconspicuous photography - the photographer's gaze is directed downwards to the camera and not demonstratively to the object - as well as the ability to condense a scene in the middle of the square format, they contributed significantly to Maier's preference for equally spontaneous shot, thoughtfully designed shots of street scenes. Due to the film format, the film material previously used in the box camera, including its development procedure, could continue to be used by it. Maier developed some of her black-and-white negatives and contact prints herself in her bathroom, while she had the majority of films, around 5,000 contact prints and, above all, enlargements developed or printed in drugstores. At that time, the people commissioned to process their material were (apart from Maier himself) in all probability the only ones who saw parts of their huge inventory of pictures. Maier gradually supplemented her imaging technology with a number of other high-quality (and also German) cameras, such as the Exakta Varex VX and Zeiss Ikon Contarex reflex cameras as well as the Leica IID , Leica IIIc and Kodak Retina IIC viewfinder cameras . Their small and handy miniature -Leicas came in the 1970s with Kodak Ektachrome 35mm (-Kleinbild) - slide film often become as a companion camera for larger medium format Rolleiflex used to photographic towards the end Maiers enterprises almost exclusively used by it.  

Long periods of unemployment made living and housing conditions increasingly difficult for Maier as he got older. A lack of opportunities to set up a darkroom no longer allowed her to develop films herself on a regular basis. No other negatives were found from the early 1980s onwards; Maier had apparently put the Rolleiflex aside and given up her b / w photography. Rather, with hundreds of rolls of color slide films, her estate documents a turn to color photography , which had developed into the dominant photographic medium at that time. A change began to take place in her motifs as well - away from people, towards often depressing shots of neglected streets, run-down houses and rubbish dumps. For Daniel Kothenschulte from the Frankfurter Rundschau, this gives rise to the following consideration: “But if you look at her pictures chronologically, you notice how their view of the world darkens: their gaze wanders more and more from beauties at the roadside to the rubbish in the gutter. She takes thousands of photos of what she hoards in her cramped living space: old newspapers with bad news. Is it such a mystery that Vivian Maier finally stopped developing the exposed film rolls? "

Probably due to a lack of space and a temporary housing shortage, Vivian Maier put most of her photographic possessions in a rented warehouse , for which she eventually owed the rent - so her private life's work was finally auctioned off by an auction house in 2007.

discovery

One of the buyers was Ron Slattery; for 250  US dollars he earned a, measured by the total amount of the auction, smaller items of 1,200 undeveloped rolls of film and made 2,008 first Vivian Maier's photographs in an Internet - blog publicly. However, the blog did not receive any noteworthy attention, because Slattery apparently did not see any reason to ensure a greater response (that Slattery would not have wanted to benefit from the unexpected celebrity Vivian Maier and her photographs, should it prove otherwise a few years later → legal disputes ) .

Another prospect was the then 26-year-old realtor John Maloof, chairman of the Jefferson Park Historical Society in Chicago, who was currently working as a hobby historian and co-author on a book on the Portage Park area of Chicago. In search of suitable historical image material, Maloof bought most of the auction with around 30,000 prints and negatives for just under $ 400, but after an initial review did not find any photographs that could be used for the book project. Like Slattery before, Maloof was unable to assess the significance of the works found on the film rolls and prints, and so he began selling some of Maier's negatives on eBay, which were initially unprofitable . Until the photographer and art critic Allan Sekula explained the scope of his find, which in turn led Maloof to purchase additional holdings from Slattery.

The contract for the second of the larger items was finally awarded to the collector and artist Jeffrey Goldstein, who thus came into possession of 17,500 negatives, 2,000 prints and a number of 8 mm narrow films , 16 mm films and Maier's color slides. Goldstein acquired further photographs by Maier from Slattery in 2010, but in December 2014 sold all of Maier's negatives to the Bulger Gallery in Toronto in view of the pending legal disputes over copyright claims.

At the auction, John Maloof had learned nothing more about the photographer than her name. A contact via the auction house failed with the information about the very poor health of the old lady, and no further details could be found about a recurring address on the envelopes of films developed. A few months later, Maloof found a lovingly worded obituary under Maier's name , which three of the former foster children had published for their former nanny on the Chicago Tribune website the day before. Another address that was noted on a shoebox brought Maloof into direct contact with the family of these three brothers, with whom Maier had worked for 17 years and then maintained a friendly relationship for some time. Maloof was given access to two containers in a warehouse that held all sorts of Maier items, including clothes, letters and papers, as well as tens of thousands of photos, negatives and exposed undeveloped films.

In October 2009, six months after her death, Maloof presented around 200 photographs by Maier in a blog and on Flickr , combined with the question to the online community as to whether “the stuff is worth anything” and what he should do with the photos , "Besides giving it to you?"

marketing

Stimulated by the enthusiastic interest in the photographs of the practically completely unknown photographer, Maloof's activities began to pick up speed: In November 2011 he published the illustrated book Vivian Maier Street Photographer and two years later a → documentary and two other photo books. One year after Maloof's first work, another publication of Maier photographs appeared from the Maier discovery camp: Based on the collection of Jeffry Goldstein at the time, the authors Richard Cahan and Michael Williams published an illustrated book entitled Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows .

At this point in time, Maier's photographs and the circumstances surrounding their discovery were already attracting great international attention in the media. Spiegel Online Kultur, for example, states: “All photos are far from being developed, sorted and dated, Maloof now works exclusively with his collection, he has set an edition of 16 per motif, determined two different sizes, prices of more than 1000 Euro called. One can only hope that it does justice to the work of the great Vivian Maier. "

Maloof provides posthumous prints and printouts with his own signature, and Goldstein proceeded in the same way when selling prints from his negative collection. Individual original enlargements, which were in Maier's legacy and were sold by Maloof, Goldstein and Slattery, are now in stores for high four- to sometimes five-digit sums. The Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, which sold the collection of Maloof commercially and through various investment consulting companies organized exhibitions worldwide to for thus about 12 × 18 cm measured paper prints (Lifetime Prints) have called more than 12,000 dollars.

The Tages-Anzeiger uses current sales on the art market [as of 2016] as an opportunity to think about the further development with not yet processed photos of Maier's world tour: “Samples from this part of her oeuvre make it clear that she is easy going can keep up with the well-known works. And one can imagine what a sensation this bundle will cause as soon as it is published. One dreads the thought of how much profit it will make. Business with Vivian Maier is running, and most of the paintings in the Zurich exhibition can be bought for 3,000 to 8,000 francs. "

Vivian Maier had deliberately cropped copies of her photos in terms of composition and effect, in contrast to enlargements made after her death. Daniel Kothenschulte comments critically about Maloof's handling of Maier's negatives: “Maloof, who is not a photo historian but a successful businessman, has them [ note : the paper images] peeled off squarely to the edge. And seems to be particularly interested in searching Maier's work for similarities to important photographers, especially that of the now seemingly priceless Diane Arbus . Ironically, however, this comparison reveals the advantage of Maiers' supposed inconspicuousness: She did not look for the grotesque, photographed her contemporaries, often not in the conventional sense, at eye level. And saves them any disfiguring exaggeration. "

Exhibitions

Vivian Maier's photographs aroused the interest of galleries and buyers only a short time after they became known; Prints of Maier's negatives, primarily selected by John Maloof and Jeffrey Goldstein, have been exhibited internationally many times. The Chicago Cultural Center showed the first solo exhibition from January to April 2011, while a permanent exhibition of Maier photographs has now become the longest exhibition in the history of the Chicago History Museum . In Germany, her photographs were shown for the first time in the Hilaneh von Kories gallery in Hamburg from January to April 2011, followed by a series of other exhibitions: from October to December 2011 in the Amerika-Haus in Munich , from April to May 2015 in the KuK in Monschau and from February to April 2015 in the Willy Brandt House in Berlin ; a significantly longer 2nd Maier exhibition of the Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus eV opened on September 25, 2018 and lasted until January 6, 2019. Other past exhibitions in German-speaking countries: from March to April 2016 took place in the Photo Bastion Zurich the most extensive Maier solo exhibition to date outside of the USA and an exhibition from May to August 2018 at the WestLicht Museum in Vienna .

reception

The reception of Vivian Maier's photographs, which were discovered by chance through an involuntarily auctioned estate and are now being used by a movement within the art market , is considered difficult. According to the Swiss art historian and university professor Meret Ernst, one of the reasons for this is that “the autodidact never discussed her photographic work and left no explanations or hints about what was really important to her.” Most of the results of Maier's photographic activities in the dark and is left to the subjective, exclusive selection of images by her discoverers and galleries, who are primarily interested in the commercial aspects; the resulting lack of a general overview makes it difficult to “understand” your photographic legacy. Experts or curators of public institutions, such as B. Museums , are therefore currently waiting to reject the prospect of a uniform, generally recognized interpretation and classification of Maier's photographs. The Swiss radio and television commented something like: "The reception of Vivian Maier's work is in the hands of the art market today - that over and over again to tell their story and the media. What is missing: the art-historical classification, the appreciation of the institutions and the pure focus on their work. "

Litigation

Since June 2014 a legal dispute has been going on in the United States over the copyright or right of use of Vivian Maier's pictures; According to the legal definition, the owner of the copyright has the sole right to decide whether and how images may be reproduced and marketed publicly , regardless of the possession (in contrast to: ownership ) of legally acquired negatives and prints. Taking into account international copyright law or international private law (also: conflict of laws), legal experts believe that, in addition to the cross-border issue, the fundamental question of whether - because of the lack of a will and because of a possibly recognizable violation of post-mortem personal rights of the Vivian Maier, who died only a few years ago - an explicit definition of copyright law in favor of the interests of descendants and estate administrators is currently constitutively enforceable.

John Maloof had found a first cousin in Sylvain Jaussaud in Saint-Julien-en-Champsaur who, in his opinion, was Vivian Maier's closest relative. Maloof reached an agreement with Jaussaud on the image rights by means of a one-off payment of $ 5,000, but omitted a legally valid determination of copyright by a competent US federal court .

The former advertising photographer and later lawyer David C. Deal then went on the offensive by first investigating Maier's family ties. As a result, Deal found another cousin, retired civil servant Francis Baille, a relative of the father of Maier's mother, in the southeastern French town of Gap ; Baille is allegedly more closely related to Maier and would therefore be heir to image rights under the laws of Cook County (with administrative headquarters in Chicago). Since then, Deal has been demanding the primary marketing rights to Maier's photographs on behalf of his client; In addition, it is about the transfer of copyrights as well as compensation payments and possible claims for damages for images that have already been marketed against the rival Maier discoverers John Maloof, Ron Slattery and Jeffrey Goldstein. Goldstein, for his part, filed a counterclaim in 2015 through a lawyer, arguing that without his initiative to promote Maier's work, it would not be as important as it is today.

Also involved in the legal dispute is the gallery owner Stephen Bulger from Toronto , buyer of the Negative Maiers from Goldstein's former possession. According to a letter from a law firm in Chicago, in which Bulger and Maloof, among others, were informed of the possible consequences of violations of copyright law, the Bulger-Galerie will cease all commercial use of its Maier collection until the rightful owner is determined.

For scientific and ethical reasons, Ann Marks and Pamela Bannos pursued the search for a rightful heir independently of one another by researching the traces of possible descendants of Maier's deceased and her closest brother Charles Maier in the line of succession. In the summer of 2015, it was revealed that Charles Maier had died in a New Jersey mental hospital in the late 1970s and never had children.

In addition to the dispute over the rights to use Maier's pictures, there is actually a purely commercial lawsuit against a gallery for alleged damage to prints. It is stressed by Ron Slattery, who - apparently regardless of the demands of Deal and Goldstein - put the damage complained of by him at $ 200,000 through a lawyer. In addition, Slattery is claiming indirect damage to his entire Maier collection of $ 2 million as a result.

After the Circuit Court of Cook County (a type of district court) negotiations with Maloof dragged on for a year and a half, David A. Epstein, Cook County's public estate administrator, announced in early May that the outcome of a contractual settlement with Maloof, who allegedly owns 90% of Vivian Maier's photographic legacy is kept secret. Confidentiality is necessary because the court is still in the early phase of negotiations with "two or three" other parties who own the rest of the Maier collection. For the purpose of promoting and selling Maier's works, they try to "get a fair agreement for everyone, but one that can last for decades". Maloof then announced in an interview that "if the deal goes through," he plans to develop hundreds of rolls of 35mm color film that Vivian Maier exposed in later years.

Just two weeks later, on May 26, 2016, a corresponding contract was approved by a judge from the Circuit Court . Epstein made the following statement to a surprised public: “We are delighted to have reached a long-term agreement with Mr. Maloof that will grant the heirs of the estate of Vivian Maier's wonderful photographic legacy for many years to come. Mr. Maloof deserves great credit for discovering and sharing Ms. Maier's work, and he has a long-term commitment to preserving that legacy and promoting her as-yet-undeveloped photos. This is a very big step towards securing the copyrights of Maier's works. "

As a result, the search for the owner of the copyright continues, while the agreement allows Maloof to continue to bring Vivian Maier's photographs to the public and to organize exhibitions with the Howard Greenberg Gallery of New York and the commercial art market through the sale of To use deductions. In view of the complicated legal situation with regard to the constellation of plaintiffs, potential heirs or plaintiffs, possible accessory plaintiffs and defendants across continental borders, legal disputes - due to the outstanding copyright - are expected for an indefinite period.

Documentaries

A large part of Vivian Maier's biography, which is widespread today, is essentially made up of two longer documentary films that depict images of Maier's life that differ significantly from one another.

In the summer of 2013, BBC One showed the documentary Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Pictures? the director and film producer Jill Nicholls. Nicholls' film was legally and content-wise produced as a pure BBC documentary for television, a version designed for distribution was consequently not shown in the cinema. As a result of the high ratings , the report was broadcast several times as a repeat on various BBC One channels until the end of 2014.

A few months later, John Maloof and filmmaker Charlie Siskel filmed his version of the story of the discovery of photographs and the search for traces of Vivian Maier in the crowdfunded documentary Finding Vivian Maier , which was shown for the first time in September 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival has been. The film is a remake from the subjective point of view of Maloof, accompanied by an elaborate PR campaign , in which the first publications of Maier's pictures or their other discoverers, contemporary witnesses and the BBC documentary are conspicuously not mentioned. In this context, critics such as Daniel Kothenschulte speak of the blurring of traces within an audience-effective promotion film on their own account, the capital of which is the allegedly sad life story of Vivian Maier, and "which revives the Van Gogh myth of the artist who has been misunderstood for life." The American film critic Dana Stevens reviews Finding Vivian Maier as “one of the worst documentaries” she saw this year [2014], “or at least the one with the most glaring discrepancy between the intrinsic value of the subject and the way it is aesthetically, intellectually and is presented morally. "

In December 2013, an American version of Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Pictures? Produced under the title The Vivian Maier Mystery , however, for some unknown reason, it was not shown on US television .

The correspondent of Deutschlandfunk Jürgen Kalwa tries to draw a comparison and says in an interview on Deutschlandfunk Kultur about Maloof's film that “unfortunately only the Nicholls film raises such important questions” as: “Why is this Vivian Maier being used by people today transfigured a mystery who are in possession of all the material? The woman we now believe we know - thanks to the film - was invented by 'people who love a good story,' says Pamela Bannos, a photographer and Maier expert who works at Northwestern University outside of Chicago teaches. Invented. Not found."

literature

  • Pamela Bannos: Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife. University Of Chicago Press, 2017, ISBN 978-0-226-47075-7 .
Fiction

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b L'histoire de Vivian Maier. association-vivian-maier-et-le-champsaur.fr; Pictures taken with Maria Maier's camera:
    Maria and Vivian , Domaine de Beauregard , playmates , Saint-Julien-en-Champsaur
  2. ^ Digging Deeper Into Vivian Maier's Past. The New York Times , January 12, 2016
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Ann Marks, Francoise Perron: About Vivian Maier Developed. wordpress.com/Blog
    - blog content only commercially available since September 2017:
    Ann Marks: Vivian Maier Developed: The Real Story of the Photographer Nanny. vivianmaierbio.wordpress.com
    → Marketing via Kindle Edition
  4. ↑ Les Amis de Jeanne Bertrand - blogspot.fr, February 10, 2014; Jeanne Bertrand
  5. ↑ Vivian Maier "la Champsaurine". champsaur.net, February 7, 2015
  6. ↑ a b c d Vivian Maier: lost art of an urban photographer. BBC One , June 25, 2013;
    Awards: Royal Television Society Best Arts Documentary Award 2013 ,
    Grand Prix 2014 - International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) Montreal     - jillnicholls.net, June 25, 2013
  7. ↑ The unknown photographer Vivian Maier. Märkische Allgemeine , March 2, 2015
  8. ↑ a b c Inaccuracies, falsehoods, and misleading bits in the Oscar nominated film Finding Vivian Maier. ( Memento from January 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) vivianmaierproject.com/Blog;
    Pamela Bannos, Art Theory & Practice (AT&P) at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University Illinois
  9. ↑ a b Vivian Maier: 120 pictures can be seen in Monschau. Aachener Zeitung , April 18, 2015
  10. ↑ Vivian Maier, au détour d'une rue. Liberation , January 27, 2014
  11. ↑ The invisible eye. Der Tagesspiegel , February 17, 2015
  12. ^ The Story of Vivian Maier. Wired Magazine , July 4, 2014
  13. ↑ Finding Vivian Maier - The secret of the undiscovered street photographer. - kultur-port.de/Magazin Kunst Kultur, June 30, 2014
  14. ↑ Unfolding the Vivian Maier mystery… - vivianmaier.blogspot.com/Blog, October 22, 2009
  15. ↑ The biggest secret lies behind the camera. derstandard.at/ derStandard.at , September 12, 2014
  16. ↑ a b c d Stolen Moments. Tages-Anzeiger, March 17, 2016
  17. ↑ a b c Hunt for acclaimed photographer Vivian Maier's long-lost brother heats up. Chicago Tribune , April 19, 2016
  18. ↑ Vivian Maier. Howard Greenberg Gallery
  19. ↑ a b c The Life and Work of Street Photographer Vivian Maier. chicagomag.com/ Chicago (magazine) , December 14, 2010
  20. ↑ Gifted and well hidden. Zeit Online, June 26, 2014
  21. ↑ Vivian Maier - Nanny Photographer. BBC One (Imagine) , June 19, 2013
  22. ↑ a b Little Miss Big Shot. The Independent, November 1, 2009
  23. ↑ a b Death Notice: Vivian Maier. Chicago Tribune , April 23, 2009
  24. ↑ a b All that remained of her life was her view of the world. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 13, 2010
  25. ↑ The street as a stage for reality. Monopoly , December 20, 2011.
  26. ↑ a b Woman in the shade. Spiegel Online , June 23, 2014 or Der Spiegel 26/2014
  27. ↑ The work of Vivian Maier. Deutschlandfunk Kultur, December 5, 2014
  28. ↑ a b c Photography exhibition: The secret genius of the nanny. Spiegel Online Kultur, February 8, 2011
  29. ^ A b Vivian Maier - Taking the Long Way Home. photobastei.ch/Photobastei, March 3 to April 3, 2016
  30. ↑ a b c The photographer Vivian Maier in the Photobastei. hochparterre.ch/Nachrichten, March 2, 2016
  31. ↑ jpg 1 , jpg 2 , jpg 3 - Vivian Maier. michelcarlue.fr/Blog photographique biodégradable, September 21, 2013
  32. ↑ Pictures of a concentrated city-walker. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 27, 2011
  33. ^ The Secret of Vivian Maier. - northwestern.edu/ Campus Life Magazine, winter 2015
  34. ↑ a b Pamela Banno's Interview: The Woman Genius Problem. SoundCloud News & Politics
  35. ↑ 'Brownie' -Boxkamera accordance Rainbow Hawk-Eye No.2 Model C
  36. ↑ Rolleiflex - gigers.com/Blog (page with pictures of different versions of the two-eyed Rolleiflex); Rolleiflex
  37. ↑ One phantom, one person. Der Tagesspiegel , June 26, 2014
  38. ↑ 5 Lessons Vivian Maier Has Taught Me About Street Photography. erickimphotography.com/Eric Kim Blog
  39. ↑ Vivian Maier / her Leicas - various network finds: jpg 4 , jpg 5 , jpg 6 ;
    s. a .: G. Rogliatti, Leica 1925-1975. Edita, Lausanne 1978, ISBN 2-88001-053-5 .
  40. ↑ An Outsider's Life in Pictures and Boxes. The New York Times , Nov. 7, 2012
  41. ↑ a b c d The vanishing moment. Frankfurter Rundschau, June 25, 2014
  42. ↑ bighappyfunhouse - bighappyfunhouse.com/Blog Ron Slattery, various posts about Vivian Maier;
    The Curious Case of Vivian Maier's Copyright. gapersblock.com/Blog, August 13, 2013
  43. ↑ Row between collectors over discovery of works by American photographer Vivian Maier as new documentary is released. The Independent , July 18, 2014
  44. ↑ Portage Park - arcadiapublishing.com/Daniel Pogorzelski, John Maloof, Arcadia Publishing 2008; Portage Park, Chicago
  45. ↑ Vivian Maier Documentary Sparks Collector Battle - artnet.com/ArtnetNews, July 21, 2014
  46. ^ The Vivian Maier “Discovery” Is More Complicated Than We Thought. hyperallergic.com/Blog, July 21, 2014
  47. ↑ Vivian Maier. The New York Times, February 16, 2012
  48. ↑ Vivian Maier's Fractured Archive. vivianmaierproject.com/Pamela Bannos / Blog
  49. ↑ a b Interview: Jeffrey Goldstein On Why He's Suing Vivian Maier's Estate. petapixel.com/Blog, May 17, 2015;
    Toronto Gallery Buys Jeffrey Goldstein's Entire Collection Of Vivian Maier Negatives. streetshootr.com/Street Shootr, December 20, 2014
  50. ^ "What do I do with this stuff (other than giving it to you)?" Flickr.com/Blog, October 10, 2009
  51. ↑ Vivian Maier - Her Discovered Work. vivianmaier.blogspot.de/Blog, May 24, 2010
  52. ↑ Vivian Maier Street Photographer. vivianmaier.com/John Maloof, book published November 16, 2011
  53. ^ Richard Cahan, Michael Williams: Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows. City Files Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9785450-9-3 ;
    Book Review: Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows. www.parkablogs.com/Blog, October 29, 2012
  54. ↑ a b c Behind-scenes struggle plays out over Vivian Maier's acclaimed photos. Chicago Tribune, January 23, 2015
  55. ↑ Twinkle, twinkle, little star… Galerie Hilaneh von Kories, January 27 to April 28, 2011
  56. ↑ Photo exhibition: Vivian Maier - A life uncovered - erstentwickler.de/Blog, November 26, 2011
  57. ↑ Vivian Maier - Street Photographer - kuk-monschau.de/Kunst- und Kulturzentrum, April 19, 2015 to May 31, 2015
  58. ↑ Vivian Maier, Street Photographer. Willy-Brandt-Haus, February 19 to April 12, 2015
  59. ↑ In her own hands. fkwbh.de
  60. ↑ Vivian Maier in the Westlicht Gallery: Riddles in the Mirrors of the City. derstandard.at, June 11, 2018
  61. ↑ The well-kept pictures of Nanny Vivian Maier. Swiss radio and television, March 4, 2016
  62. ^ Copyright Law of the United States of America (Ownership and Transfer) - copyright.gov/ United States Copyright Office
  63. ↑ What happens to a copyright when the copyright holder dies? New Media Rights , November 27, 2011
  64. ↑ a b The Heir's Not Apparent - A Legal Battle Over Vivian Maier's Work. The New York Times , September 5, 2014
  65. ↑ Dispute over the estate of the street photographer - alleged legacy in France. Deutschlandfunk Kultur , September 7, 2014;
    Vivian Maier's posthumous treasure trove of images sparked a legal battle over copyright. presseportal.de/ art - Das Kunstmagazin , December 18, 2014
  66. ↑ Rogers Park artist fights for control of photographer Vivian Maier's estate. Chicago Tribune , April 19, 2016
  67. ↑ Making Sense of the Legal Battle Over Vivian Maier's Artworks - hyperallergic.com/Blog, September 9, 2014
  68. ↑ New Details About Charles Maier Surface As Search For Vivian Maier Heir Narrows. streetshootr.com/Street Shootr, August 20, 2015
  69. ↑ a b Settlement over photographer Vivian Maier's estate must stay secret. Chicago Tribune , May 11, 2016
  70. ^ Wicker Park Gallery Being Sued For Damaging Vivian Maier Photos. ( Memento from January 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) chicagoist.com/chicagoist Arts & Entertainment, May 13, 2014
  71. ^ Homepage of the Circuit Court of Cook County
  72. ^ Fight over Vivian Maier's photos settled, but deal sealed from public. Chicago Tribune, May 27, 2016
  73. ^ Agreement between John Maloof and The Estate of Vivian Maier finalized. businesswire.com, June 13, 2016
  74. ↑ a b Losing Vivian Maier. Chicago Reader , February 4, 2015 (update)
  75. ↑ Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny's Pictures? - bbc.co.uk/ BBC One (Imagine) , first broadcast on June 25, 2013
  76. ↑ Vivian Maier's Photographs Are Stunning. But the Oscar-Nominated Movie About Her Is a Mess.
    - slate.com/Blog, January 16, 2015; Slate (magazine) ; Dana Stevens
  77. ^ The Vivian Maier Mystery DVD Review. renegadecinema.com; The Vivian Maier Mystery. IMDb ;
    The Vivian Maier Mystery - Official Trailer. YouTube
  78. ↑ The legend of the rediscovered artist. Deutschlandfunk Kultur , June 24, 2014
  79. ↑ Vivian Maier, the Photographer Who Wanted to Go Unobserved - hyperallergic.com/Blog, October 1, 2017;
    various receptions - Pamela Bannos, Northwestern University Illinois, 2017
  80. ↑ Annegret Heitmann: Christina Hesselholdt: Vivian (2016) - New Reading Scandinavia, November 22, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Maier, Vivian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maier, Vivian Dorothea (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 2009
Place of death Chicago