Vivian Maier, the American photographer who became famous by accident

In 2007, when the American John Maloof, a 26-year-old real estate agent, bought a batch of boxes of negatives at auction in Chicago, he had no idea that he was signing the birth certificate of a phenomenon. He has just discovered the archives of the one who will soon be called “the nanny photographer”, Vivian Maier. A total unknown who, from the 1950s to the 1980s, made more than 140,000 images, including street photos in Chicago and New York, and more than 500 self-portraits, while babysitting to earn a living. When John Maloof finally tracks him down, the enigmatic Vivian Maier is already dead – in 2009, alone and poor.

Since this discovery, which John Maloof recounted in the film Looking for Vivian Maier (2013), nothing seems to be able to slow down the rise of the photographer. Exhibitions have multiplied in France and abroad – the one, in 2021, at the Musée du Luxembourg, in Paris, attracted 213,000 spectators.

According to Howard Greenberg, the New York gallery owner who manages the marketing of Vivian Maier’s photos, between 3,000 and 4,000 prints have been sold. With prices on the rise: offered at 1,800 dollars at the beginning, they now reach between 3,500 and 7,000 dollars. “Beyond the works, it was the storytelling that interested me”, explains Sophie Kervran, director of the Museum of Pont-Aven (Finistère). To broaden her audience, last spring she exhibited self-portraits by Vivian Maier. “Even people far from art are taken in the guts. » The photographer, who grew up in the French Alps, now has a street named after her in the 13^e district of Paris.

“What makes her an artist is her perseverance in creation” – Marta Gili, former director of the Jeu de Paume, in Paris

If the public and commercial success of Vivian Maier is undeniable, the status of her work raises questions. Because she never showed her work. She left no writing about her intentions. And, if she thought for a time of marketing her landscapes in the form of postcards, she remained an amateur.

What to feed the accusations of artist “made by the market”. Marta Gili, former director of the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the first institution to have exhibited it in France in 2013, rejects this narrow vision. “What makes her an artist, she says, it is his perseverance in creation. Vivian Maier found in the photo a space of freedom. »

Read also Photography: Vivian Maier, the color of mystery

Another problem: it is the prints that define the work of a photographer, whereas the negatives are drafts where the attempts, the failures and the successes are mixed. “The negative is a matrix, not a work, confirms Marta Gili. It is from this that the photographer interprets. » However, Vivian Maier above all left tens of thousands of negatives, some not even developed, and some 7,000 prints, many of them of mediocre quality. Also the prints exhibited and sold are posthumous: the photographer has never seen or approved them. How can we say, then, that they reflect his vision?

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