Finding Vivian Maier

In researching a book of the Chicago neighbourhood he grew up in, John Maloof found himself bidding for a box of negatives from an unknown photographer at an auction. He goes home, scans them, and discovers the mid-20th century images of street photography are astounding. He googles the name – Vivian Maier – but no dice. He uploads the pictures and the response is terrific. Skip forward and Vivian Maier, a reclusive nanny who died only two years before the discovery, is hailed as a great talent.

A nanny to affluent suburban children by day and a street photographer by, well, day, Vivian Maier was a contradiction. She distrusted people and kept the world at arm's length, yet her pictures yearned to connect with the world-weary faces she snapped. The images are public but intimate. She's a mysterious figure, which is why Maloof, surrounded by boxes and boxes of negatives, letters, receipts, tapes, and film canisters Charles Foster Kane style, took it upon himself to have her work recognised and to find out who she was.

That's where the 'Finding' of the title comes in and elevates this documentary. Not content with being a belated celebration of a late artist's talent (which we get too), Maloof and Siskel's documentary explore the person… and it’s here that things take a dark turn. The children in her care are vocal about being mistreated by their 'eccentric' nanny. And there's more. Why did she use fake French accent? Why the estrangement from her family? Why the false names? Why the barely veiled contempt for humanity? Maloof and Siskel go about putting together the pieces, sketching out a person that no one really knew.

While it raises some interesting questions - why hoard the negs? Why not get the images out there? What would she make of this fame? – the documentary also questions itself: If the very private women was content to keep the images undeveloped, then what right does Maloof have to make them public? Maloof does some mental gymnastics to justify all this when he discovers that Maier sought to develop some images. This, Maloof states, is a hidden desire to show her work to everyone. Hmm.

There's terrific momentum, with the talking heads (children, former employees, critics) all of the same thought, finishing sentences and stories. The music helps things along too and when the brief eighty three minutes are up, there's a desire for more. Much more.