Putting nanny in the picture
IMAGINE: VIVIAN MAIER – WHO TOOK NANNY’S PICTURES?
BBC 1, 10.35pm
NO-ONE had heard of Vivian Maier five years ago. She was just a former nanny, who people found slightly eccentric, who ended up in hospital after an accident.
And few people had seen the thousands of photographs she had taken over the years, both in the Chicago streets and in the homes and gardens of the families she cared for.
She was just the quirky lady whose camera, according to one of the interviewees in this film, just looked part of the eccentric vintage look she had.
But Maier’s photographs are now worth thousands of dollars. How they came to be discovered, and what people have found out about the woman who took them is the subject of this riveting documentary, a film far more intriguing than many that have been made about famous artists.
Maier has become known as “Mary Poppins with a camera”. The photographs she took got up close to her subjects, whether they were the commuters walking busily down the street, homeless people, or kids crying or playing together.
They seem to capture something of life in the 1960s and 1970s when she photographed most of them.
But she was, by all accounts, a very distanced, reclusive type. These photos were entirely unknown until the contents of her storage lockers were sold off when she was too old and ill and unable to pay the rent.
Once the treasure trove was uncovered a trade and industry started to quickly develop around her work.
But this was only after her death. Then people wanted to know who Vivian Maier was. Why had she taken these pictures?
Would she have liked the way they were being edited and displayed? And how would she feel about this fascination with her life?