EIFF 2014: Finding Vivian Maier

In 2007 John Maloof, while researching for a book on Chicago, happened upon a collection of 30,000 prints and negatives by one Vivian Maier. Googling her name he found nothing. Over the next few years he bought everything of hers he could find, uncovering more about her life as he went.

It turned out that she was an eccentric and intensely private nanny who spent her time both on and off the job walking the streets surreptitiously taking thousands of photographs with a neck-hung Rolleiflex. She showed her life’s work to no one.

“I find the mystery of it more interesting than her work itself,” says one of the many interviewees (consisting mainly of her employers, their children, or people who knew her only briefly), and this is unfortunately the documentary’s focus. The enigma’s all well and good, but it’s the work we really care about. If only Maloof and Siskel had focused less on gossipy psychological guesswork, and more on Maier’s art, this could’ve been a documentary worthy of its towering subject.