Finding Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier (1926-2009) lived as a nanny in Chicago and New York. She was considered an original person who never left home without her camera. With her children, whom she always looked after conscientiously, she liked to wander around the parts of the city where the less privileged lived. Many of her photos therefore show people in a fortuitous moment, apparently unobserved, but extremely touching. "It's quite possible that we wouldn't know anything about Vivian Maier's life and her photographs if it had been up to her", explains director Charlie Siskel: "She chose a secretive existence and hid her art while she was alive". She thus found herself in the position of Franz Kafka, who decreed that his writings should be burnt without being read. Except that John Maloof and Charlie Siskel found her work, published it and used the thousands of photos and films to make this documentary about a secret artist. The result is a fascinating film about the life of a woman who captured moving moments of herself and her environment in her photographs, but left no trace. This is why the man Vivian Maier remains a mystery to the end, which we try to approach through interviews with her former children and her commissioners. This cinematic treatment of Vivian Maier's legacy has made her the best-known street photographer of the 20th century.