1 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:23,520 One of the most intriguing photographers of the 20th century 2 00:00:23,520 --> 00:00:25,600 took her first known pictures here. 3 00:00:38,520 --> 00:00:40,520 Most she didn't even print, 4 00:00:40,520 --> 00:00:43,760 but saw just once in her viewfinder as she took them. 5 00:00:46,560 --> 00:00:49,680 It was 3,000 miles away in America 6 00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:52,240 that Vivian Maier spent her life. 7 00:00:54,280 --> 00:00:56,560 She worked as a nanny 8 00:00:56,560 --> 00:00:59,000 and every day she took pictures - 9 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,280 150,000 of them. 10 00:01:04,240 --> 00:01:06,560 She was a poet of suburbia. 11 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:08,800 A secret street photographer, 12 00:01:08,800 --> 00:01:11,120 before the term was really invented. 13 00:01:15,520 --> 00:01:18,200 The shadows of the America of her time 14 00:01:18,200 --> 00:01:20,760 fall across Vivian Maier's photographs. 15 00:01:24,840 --> 00:01:27,280 Just before she died, four years ago, 16 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:29,840 her life's work was discovered by accident 17 00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:31,840 in storage lockers in Chicago. 18 00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:36,040 It proved a treasure trove for the finders. 19 00:01:37,240 --> 00:01:39,280 People found it hard to believe 20 00:01:39,280 --> 00:01:42,920 that Mary Poppins with a camera could have taken these pictures. 21 00:01:44,120 --> 00:01:47,800 It's a classic parable of the artist, unsung in life. 22 00:01:51,320 --> 00:01:52,920 Van Gogh once said, 23 00:01:52,920 --> 00:01:55,040 "Stars are the souls of dead poets, 24 00:01:55,040 --> 00:01:58,000 "but to become a star, you have to die." 25 00:02:25,560 --> 00:02:28,440 I was the manager of a movie theatre here in Chicago. 26 00:02:29,920 --> 00:02:33,600 I noticed her, cos she was kind of an odd bird and er... 27 00:02:33,600 --> 00:02:37,440 she came probably three or four times a month 28 00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:44,040 for 13 years and she was also the type of person 29 00:02:44,040 --> 00:02:48,480 I think you could potentially wonder if she was a little crazy. 30 00:02:49,640 --> 00:02:51,960 I did notice her camera, 31 00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:56,480 but with her vintage clothing, I just thought it was part of the costume. 32 00:02:59,320 --> 00:03:02,200 The rest of my staff at the theatre thought she was mean. 33 00:03:02,200 --> 00:03:04,760 They would say, "Oh, I don't want to deal with her. 34 00:03:04,760 --> 00:03:06,320 "Jim, can you go talk to her?" 35 00:03:06,320 --> 00:03:10,360 I never saw her come with anybody and I never saw her talk to anybody. 36 00:03:12,440 --> 00:03:17,080 After the films, she would be leaving at 11 or midnight 37 00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:18,960 and I would wonder where she would go. 38 00:03:21,360 --> 00:03:24,080 Didn't seem homeless, but she seemed close. 39 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:33,880 She loved seeing a Buster Keaton film with children in the room. 40 00:03:33,880 --> 00:03:36,440 They would be laughing and the piano would be playing 41 00:03:36,440 --> 00:03:38,480 and it was just a really magical moment. 42 00:03:45,240 --> 00:03:47,640 Did you know she was a nanny? 43 00:03:47,640 --> 00:03:49,120 No idea. 44 00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:54,200 To be honest with you, I was a little afraid to... 45 00:03:54,200 --> 00:03:55,960 try to know too much about her. 46 00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:01,920 Now, I sort of regret not prying a little bit 47 00:04:01,920 --> 00:04:03,480 and finding out about her life, 48 00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:05,720 it seems so interesting in retrospect. 49 00:04:07,960 --> 00:04:13,120 And I was just a little bit afraid to get deep with this woman, you know. 50 00:04:38,880 --> 00:04:41,160 This is Inger Raymond, 51 00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:43,640 one of Vivian Maier's charges. 52 00:04:43,640 --> 00:04:46,200 Vivian took hundreds of photographs of Inger, 53 00:04:46,200 --> 00:04:48,960 almost all of which she's never seen before. 54 00:04:50,360 --> 00:04:52,400 Many were taken on this beach. 55 00:04:53,880 --> 00:04:55,720 If Miss Maier was out here, 56 00:04:55,720 --> 00:04:58,600 she would wait until one of the kids was crawling 57 00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:01,040 right between that little ice cave hole. 58 00:05:05,120 --> 00:05:07,240 That was where she would take a picture. 59 00:05:18,640 --> 00:05:21,400 When the printer was printing this... Mmm. 60 00:05:21,400 --> 00:05:25,160 ..he didn't realise someone was hiding inside of the cupboard. 61 00:05:25,160 --> 00:05:27,000 Really? Oh, my God! 62 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:29,160 All of a sudden, he saw this, this eyeball. 63 00:05:29,160 --> 00:05:32,600 It makes a very eerie look, 64 00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:35,800 but I know what it is, it's one of those large sewer pipes. 65 00:05:37,120 --> 00:05:42,920 I love that image because it is so dramatic, it's stark, 66 00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:46,520 it's er...film noir, almost. 67 00:05:46,520 --> 00:05:48,480 If you look at it closely, 68 00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:51,160 there is a cross right on the face, 69 00:05:51,160 --> 00:05:57,640 right on my face, and it's this almost caged-animal look with cross. 70 00:05:57,640 --> 00:05:59,000 It's very interesting. 71 00:06:00,280 --> 00:06:04,760 When she took her photos, she would be completely and utterly focused. 72 00:06:04,760 --> 00:06:08,760 I mean, it was just, you know, instant, you know, absolute, 73 00:06:08,760 --> 00:06:10,840 erm...concentration... 74 00:06:12,520 --> 00:06:13,880 ..that it would be done. 75 00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:25,240 I think even if she was here, 76 00:06:25,240 --> 00:06:27,200 she couldn't explain her photography to us 77 00:06:27,200 --> 00:06:29,720 because she didn't like talking about her photography 78 00:06:29,720 --> 00:06:31,360 and most of the people who knew her, 79 00:06:31,360 --> 00:06:33,360 and there are very few people who knew her, 80 00:06:33,360 --> 00:06:35,600 she never talked about her photography. 81 00:06:41,560 --> 00:06:45,200 So everything that we can learn about her is going to come from pictures, 82 00:06:45,200 --> 00:06:47,520 because they show us what she liked, 83 00:06:47,520 --> 00:06:49,320 what she disliked, what she was drawn to. 84 00:06:49,320 --> 00:06:51,600 We really are just left with the images. 85 00:06:56,560 --> 00:06:59,000 Vivian Maier used to haunt this market 86 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:02,080 with a movie camera as well as her stills camera. 87 00:07:24,280 --> 00:07:28,440 "Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop, die knowing something, 88 00:07:28,440 --> 00:07:30,000 "you're not here long." 89 00:07:52,120 --> 00:07:55,640 The flea market is a shadow of its former self, 90 00:07:55,640 --> 00:07:59,720 but still the happy hunting ground of pickers, treasure hunters. 91 00:08:06,240 --> 00:08:10,040 And pickers love old photos and postcards. 92 00:08:10,040 --> 00:08:13,920 Oh, man, you get the trucker photos, I get the racing photos. 93 00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:16,480 Vivian Maier's work was brought to light 94 00:08:16,480 --> 00:08:19,400 by people just like those she used to photograph. 95 00:08:19,400 --> 00:08:21,480 What do you think? I just got here this morning. 96 00:08:21,480 --> 00:08:26,000 Ron Slattery was the first to buy Vivian's work at auction in 2007. 97 00:08:27,240 --> 00:08:28,960 The Chicago stuff's great. 98 00:08:28,960 --> 00:08:30,400 Postcards? 99 00:08:30,400 --> 00:08:32,280 Yeah, these are old postcards. 100 00:08:32,280 --> 00:08:35,400 Roger Gunderson was the auctioneer who sold it to him. 101 00:08:37,120 --> 00:08:39,320 Oh, there you go. That's nice. 102 00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:41,440 There's Lake Street with the... 103 00:08:43,200 --> 00:08:44,920 That's pretty cool, isn't it? 104 00:08:49,560 --> 00:08:51,800 Vivian Maier had no home of her own, 105 00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:55,240 so she kept her life's work in storage lockers. 106 00:08:55,240 --> 00:08:58,880 But in her old age, she was no longer able to pay the rent, 107 00:08:58,880 --> 00:09:01,280 so the contents of the lockers were sold. 108 00:09:02,400 --> 00:09:04,440 What would she have paid 109 00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:06,960 to keep that stuff in storage over the years? 110 00:09:09,040 --> 00:09:11,920 Thousands of dollars, I would imagine. 111 00:09:11,920 --> 00:09:14,760 Is, isn't that sort of tragic, in a way, 112 00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:18,840 that she puts all her life's work into storage 113 00:09:18,840 --> 00:09:21,680 and she's paying out these huge sums of money for it 114 00:09:21,680 --> 00:09:24,880 and then she loses it all? And, and it all goes away, yeah. 115 00:09:27,640 --> 00:09:29,800 When her lockers were put up for sale, 116 00:09:29,800 --> 00:09:31,640 half a dozen dealers turned up. 117 00:09:35,600 --> 00:09:38,360 All they saw were old suitcases and boxes. 118 00:09:38,360 --> 00:09:43,120 They'd open the door and you'd bid from the doorway, you'd look, 119 00:09:43,120 --> 00:09:47,160 you couldn't touch, what you see is what you get. 120 00:09:47,160 --> 00:09:49,400 And it was always a big gamble. 121 00:09:49,400 --> 00:09:52,200 You might end up with something worth nothing 122 00:09:52,200 --> 00:09:54,520 or you might end up with something worth millions, 123 00:09:54,520 --> 00:09:57,320 which, as it happens... It happens. 124 00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:04,240 Roger bought five lockers full of Vivian Maier's stuff. 125 00:10:04,240 --> 00:10:06,280 It filled one and a half trucks, 126 00:10:06,280 --> 00:10:08,640 unloaded here in this auction room. 127 00:10:10,760 --> 00:10:14,320 'Had I known that this thing was going to get as big as it had, 128 00:10:14,320 --> 00:10:17,440 'I would have saved every crumb of paper I had.' 129 00:10:17,440 --> 00:10:20,240 And these are the trucks that you put all Vivian's stuff in? 130 00:10:20,240 --> 00:10:21,800 Yes, this one right here. 131 00:10:21,800 --> 00:10:26,240 'But we threw some away, personal writings and things like that, 132 00:10:26,240 --> 00:10:29,840 'some of that stuff that, hindsight being 20/20, had we known, we would have kept it.' 133 00:10:32,280 --> 00:10:36,480 But we, we sold it, we turned it, we made money - deal. 134 00:10:41,640 --> 00:10:44,400 The Vivian Maier phenomenon had begun. 135 00:10:49,560 --> 00:10:53,760 Now, New York galleries sell new prints, often made from negatives 136 00:10:53,760 --> 00:10:57,840 that Vivian never even developed, for upwards of $2,000. 137 00:10:59,800 --> 00:11:04,920 Vintage prints made in Vivian's lifetime go for $8,000. 138 00:11:06,200 --> 00:11:09,680 It's a complete accident that the world has stumbled on her work. 139 00:11:09,680 --> 00:11:12,800 It could very easily have been destroyed without anyone knowing about it. 140 00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:18,600 Vivian Maier, unlike any other photographer I can think of, 141 00:11:18,600 --> 00:11:22,040 made her work entirely for herself. 142 00:11:22,040 --> 00:11:27,560 She had no audience, she knew no other photographers, 143 00:11:27,560 --> 00:11:33,480 she didn't really print her work, except in the most rudimentary form. 144 00:11:33,480 --> 00:11:36,960 She didn't exhibit her work or publish her work. 145 00:11:36,960 --> 00:11:41,240 It was a project entirely self-motivated, 146 00:11:41,240 --> 00:11:44,160 entirely self-fulfilling 147 00:11:44,160 --> 00:11:48,840 and this creates a certain freedom, a certain independence. 148 00:11:48,840 --> 00:11:50,880 It's her own personal voice. 149 00:11:53,880 --> 00:11:57,000 Vivian Maier worked in a variety of genres - 150 00:11:57,000 --> 00:11:58,760 she took street photography, 151 00:11:58,760 --> 00:12:02,040 wandering around the streets of Chicago and New York, 152 00:12:02,040 --> 00:12:04,560 indigene people on the street, because they're on the street 153 00:12:04,560 --> 00:12:07,800 and just marvellously expressive moment. 154 00:12:10,480 --> 00:12:13,200 She does wonderful portraits 155 00:12:13,200 --> 00:12:15,880 that are of distinctive characters 156 00:12:15,880 --> 00:12:18,600 that she is able to capture in a moment, 157 00:12:18,600 --> 00:12:20,600 everything is moving very, very fast. 158 00:12:20,600 --> 00:12:22,560 She would definitely be very close 159 00:12:22,560 --> 00:12:26,120 in order to capture the way his hair is stuck to his forehead 160 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:28,040 and this anxious expression. 161 00:12:34,360 --> 00:12:36,560 She's very much like a poet 162 00:12:36,560 --> 00:12:40,640 who's trying to just observe very carefully, 163 00:12:40,640 --> 00:12:43,880 for personal reasons - to look at the world 164 00:12:43,880 --> 00:12:47,280 and locate what's important to her, 165 00:12:47,280 --> 00:12:48,800 what interests her, 166 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:50,800 capture it in a photograph. 167 00:12:53,880 --> 00:12:55,880 It's exceedingly personal. 168 00:13:02,880 --> 00:13:04,360 There is humour in her work. 169 00:13:08,880 --> 00:13:11,320 This is a picture of one of the children 170 00:13:11,320 --> 00:13:13,480 that Vivian Maier took care of. 171 00:13:15,200 --> 00:13:19,880 She photographed while she was working, moonlighting on the job. 172 00:13:19,880 --> 00:13:24,800 Some of those remain in the...realm of snapshots. 173 00:13:26,440 --> 00:13:29,640 But many of them transcend that genre 174 00:13:29,640 --> 00:13:34,480 and become more observations about children, about family, 175 00:13:34,480 --> 00:13:35,960 about the suburbs... 176 00:13:38,440 --> 00:13:40,680 Youth confronting age. 177 00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:48,080 Who's going to have the time and the space to be in somebody's backyard, 178 00:13:48,080 --> 00:13:50,120 taking that kind of picture? 179 00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:53,320 A nanny would, you know, who's also a great photographer. 180 00:13:56,640 --> 00:14:00,200 I mean, all her self-portraits intrigue me, cos er... 181 00:14:01,760 --> 00:14:05,160 ..you know, they're her and she intrigues me. 182 00:14:05,160 --> 00:14:07,280 She was interested in seeing 183 00:14:07,280 --> 00:14:09,800 how she fit into the world. 184 00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:15,600 We believe that she never fully realised her work, 185 00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:18,560 so we are helping her to realise it, 186 00:14:18,560 --> 00:14:22,120 by printing it in a certain way, by editing it in a certain way, 187 00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:25,600 picking the pictures that have meaning to us, 188 00:14:25,600 --> 00:14:29,120 erm... You know, it's, it is what it is. 189 00:14:29,120 --> 00:14:30,840 It's a very unique case. 190 00:14:34,880 --> 00:14:39,600 Ron Slattery owns about 2,000 of Vivian's prints and negatives, 191 00:14:39,600 --> 00:14:41,400 which he is NOT selling. 192 00:14:45,040 --> 00:14:47,000 Let's start with this one. 193 00:14:47,000 --> 00:14:49,680 'Would you tell us what you paid for them?' 194 00:14:49,680 --> 00:14:51,520 $250. 195 00:14:52,760 --> 00:14:54,120 And away we go. 196 00:14:54,120 --> 00:14:57,200 'For how many photographs? 'My whole collection.' 197 00:14:57,200 --> 00:15:00,240 For the same sum, the auctioneer got all five lockers. 198 00:15:00,240 --> 00:15:02,480 'Did you make a lot of money out of it?' 199 00:15:02,480 --> 00:15:04,880 Somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000. 200 00:15:04,880 --> 00:15:08,160 Do you wish on some days, when you wake up in the morning, 201 00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:10,840 that you'd actually kept it all? 202 00:15:10,840 --> 00:15:12,800 Well, hindsight being 20/20, sure. 203 00:15:12,800 --> 00:15:14,200 That's one of my favourites. 204 00:15:14,200 --> 00:15:17,360 'But when we first started selling this, nobody knew,' 205 00:15:17,360 --> 00:15:19,160 even the people buying I don't think knew. 206 00:15:19,160 --> 00:15:21,320 Did you see the photos before you bought them? 207 00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:24,480 Nah, I just kind of looked it was like, "Oh, neato - photos," and bought them. 208 00:15:24,480 --> 00:15:28,280 'At the time, I was buying so many photographs. 209 00:15:28,280 --> 00:15:32,480 'That is, putting them into boxes and putting them into storage, 210 00:15:32,480 --> 00:15:35,280 'much the same way Vivian did.' 211 00:15:35,280 --> 00:15:37,360 That's Vivian Maier. 212 00:15:37,360 --> 00:15:39,200 A very unique self-portrait. 213 00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:50,200 Vivian never saw anything like the beautiful large prints 214 00:15:50,200 --> 00:15:52,840 that are being made today. 215 00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:56,760 When she saw prints at all, they were usually small ones like these, 216 00:15:56,760 --> 00:16:00,440 supplied by the drugstore or made by her in her lodgings. 217 00:16:01,920 --> 00:16:04,760 Ron's collection would be dwarfed by others. 218 00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:08,400 There was a gentleman named Randy who bought some. 219 00:16:08,400 --> 00:16:12,800 One man, John Maloof, left an absentee bid on a box of negatives, 220 00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:14,400 just a little bit of everybody, 221 00:16:14,400 --> 00:16:17,160 so that's kind of where her work kind of went "Whoop!" 222 00:16:17,160 --> 00:16:19,760 When I went through some boxes in 2008, 223 00:16:19,760 --> 00:16:22,760 I pulled out the slides and went, "Wow, these are cool," 224 00:16:22,760 --> 00:16:24,480 posted some on my website. 225 00:16:38,520 --> 00:16:41,760 John starts making prints from Vivian's negatives 226 00:16:41,760 --> 00:16:43,600 and selling them on eBay. 227 00:16:44,920 --> 00:16:49,200 Alan Secular, who's an art professor in California, 228 00:16:49,200 --> 00:16:52,520 contacted John and said, "This is very important." 229 00:16:52,520 --> 00:16:56,320 At this point was where he went, "Ding! OK." 230 00:16:56,320 --> 00:16:59,840 He started collecting as much of the work as he could. 231 00:16:59,840 --> 00:17:03,480 So Vivian's pictures were starting to appear online, 232 00:17:03,480 --> 00:17:06,280 but who was making the selection? 233 00:17:06,280 --> 00:17:07,920 It worries some people. 234 00:17:11,320 --> 00:17:16,760 I'll be the first to honour the quality of the work, 235 00:17:16,760 --> 00:17:19,000 but, at the same time, I'm concerned, 236 00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:22,200 because we're only seeing pictures 237 00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:28,880 that the people who bought the suitcases decided to edit 238 00:17:28,880 --> 00:17:32,160 and, and what kind of editors are they? 239 00:17:32,160 --> 00:17:35,920 What would she have edited out of this work 240 00:17:35,920 --> 00:17:38,600 and what would she have printed? 241 00:17:38,600 --> 00:17:44,680 How do any of us know who the real Vivian Maier is? 242 00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:47,560 So you were telling the world about Vivian - 243 00:17:47,560 --> 00:17:49,880 did you ever think to seek out Vivian yourself? 244 00:17:49,880 --> 00:17:52,040 John and I both googled up Vivian. 245 00:17:52,040 --> 00:17:55,160 And we're searching for her, we could find no information. 246 00:17:56,920 --> 00:18:00,760 The first thing that popped up was her obituary after she passed away. 247 00:18:04,520 --> 00:18:09,000 John Maloof now owns the lion's share of Vivian's work. 248 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:13,040 He declined to take part in this film, because he's making his own. 249 00:18:18,040 --> 00:18:23,440 The second biggest owner is now Jeff Goldstein, an artist and carpenter. 250 00:18:23,440 --> 00:18:25,760 You've changed your entire life, Jeff - 251 00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:27,560 you've given up your vocation 252 00:18:27,560 --> 00:18:30,680 and now you're just in the Vivian Maier business. Right. 253 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:33,480 And you're not the only one in this genre, of course, 254 00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:36,920 there's John Maloof. What does that make you feel? 255 00:18:36,920 --> 00:18:40,960 Well, we spend half of our time trying to push our projects forward 256 00:18:40,960 --> 00:18:42,440 and I think we spend the other half 257 00:18:42,440 --> 00:18:45,080 trying not to look like public assholes. 258 00:18:45,080 --> 00:18:46,880 We're under global scrutiny. 259 00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:52,160 Her house is right around the corner up here. 260 00:18:53,600 --> 00:18:56,120 And this is a pretty tough neighbourhood to be. 261 00:18:56,120 --> 00:18:59,800 There was a fair amount of drug activity, a fair amount of crime takes place. 262 00:19:04,760 --> 00:19:07,840 So this was her, her last residence here. 263 00:19:07,840 --> 00:19:09,800 That's the door? Yeah. 264 00:19:13,520 --> 00:19:16,440 Did she photograph a lot around this area? 265 00:19:16,440 --> 00:19:18,400 She did, along this stretch of Howard Street - 266 00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:20,480 there's a beautiful shot coming off the bridge, 267 00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:24,680 looking down in fact this way, the train tracks. 268 00:19:24,680 --> 00:19:30,720 She fell and hit her head actually right by those tracks. 269 00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:32,240 Really? 270 00:19:32,240 --> 00:19:36,000 And she was taken to a local hospital, resisted help 271 00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:38,080 and they thought she would recover, 272 00:19:38,080 --> 00:19:40,320 but, apparently, that was not the case. 273 00:19:52,680 --> 00:19:56,600 So during that period when the storage locker sales were happening, 274 00:19:56,600 --> 00:20:00,400 she was in hospital, recovering from this accident? 275 00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:01,880 That's my understanding. 276 00:20:05,040 --> 00:20:07,960 Yeah, I really came into this about a year later, 277 00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:10,240 which, in some ways, is nice for me. 278 00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:12,720 How do you mean by that? 279 00:20:12,720 --> 00:20:16,760 She went into arrears, her lockers came up... 280 00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:19,720 I'm thankful to be one step removed from all of that. 281 00:20:28,080 --> 00:20:31,480 Jeff bought the bulk of his collection from Randy Prow, 282 00:20:31,480 --> 00:20:33,920 who'd bought it at Roger's auctions. 283 00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:35,680 When these transactions take place, 284 00:20:35,680 --> 00:20:38,160 it's not for the faint of heart, 285 00:20:38,160 --> 00:20:41,000 it's not a standard art acquisition. 286 00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:43,720 People are on their guard. 287 00:20:43,720 --> 00:20:46,360 How did you get hold of these pictures? 288 00:20:46,360 --> 00:20:51,040 I initially went down to where Randy Prow lives, in Southern Indiana, 289 00:20:51,040 --> 00:20:53,840 it's a good eight-hour drive from Chicago. 290 00:20:53,840 --> 00:20:57,320 And I brought along someone with me, a retired fireman, Chicago fireman, 291 00:20:57,320 --> 00:21:00,160 er...pretty burly, good-size guy 292 00:21:00,160 --> 00:21:03,200 and I met up with Randy, who I had never, hadn't met before, 293 00:21:03,200 --> 00:21:07,120 in an abandoned warehouse in a run-down section in this town. 294 00:21:07,120 --> 00:21:09,920 Randy had somebody with HIM for backup, 295 00:21:09,920 --> 00:21:13,600 so we both came into this being pretty leery of one another. 296 00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:17,160 Randy's guy was much bigger than my guy. 297 00:21:17,160 --> 00:21:18,800 You carried the money with you? Yeah. 298 00:21:18,800 --> 00:21:23,320 It looked like I had a vest with bricks attached to it, 299 00:21:23,320 --> 00:21:27,280 so like, the type they wear in the army for protection, I guess. 300 00:21:28,560 --> 00:21:32,800 Later, Randy was ready to sell even more of Vivian's work. 301 00:21:32,800 --> 00:21:34,680 More and more people were hearing about it, 302 00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:37,600 so the last purchase price was astronomical. 303 00:21:37,600 --> 00:21:41,360 It was something I couldn't handle alone, 304 00:21:41,360 --> 00:21:43,920 and so John Maloof and I got together 305 00:21:43,920 --> 00:21:46,280 to make the last purchase from Randy Prow. 306 00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:57,680 I went down with John and his friend Tony - 307 00:21:57,680 --> 00:22:01,200 I had my friend Rick, who was an off-duty Chicago cop. 308 00:22:01,200 --> 00:22:07,360 Rick comes armed, and Randy brought his brother, who came armed. 309 00:22:07,360 --> 00:22:09,800 There was a great deal of intensity in that room, 310 00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:13,040 cos you, you just don't know what may or may not happen. 311 00:22:15,080 --> 00:22:17,920 I was sweating some bullets in there. 312 00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:19,400 No pun intended. 313 00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:27,560 So who was this elusive woman 314 00:22:27,560 --> 00:22:30,080 who took these thousands of photographs... 315 00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:36,320 ..often full of tenderness, like a parent's, 316 00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:38,640 but always from the outside? 317 00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:44,760 All these were taken in the '50s and '60s 318 00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:48,400 when she was working as a nanny in the suburbs north of Chicago. 319 00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:54,480 She worked in several houses, 320 00:22:54,480 --> 00:22:56,840 but for by far the longest time 321 00:22:56,840 --> 00:22:59,040 with a family called the Ginsbergs. 322 00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:04,280 Vivian's family, 323 00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:10,200 they were very much a hub of that neighbourhood 324 00:23:10,200 --> 00:23:13,920 and I think she probably enjoyed it... 325 00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:22,440 ..enjoyed the erm...the energy that flowed from their family. 326 00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,880 It was a prosperous community, 327 00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:30,240 probably predominantly Jewish. 328 00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:37,760 It was really a neighbourhood in a very old-fashioned way. 329 00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:44,680 We ice-skated, we went to the beach. 330 00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:48,720 She rode a bicycle - 331 00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:50,760 we all rode bicycles, children, 332 00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:52,800 but...but grown-ups seldom did. 333 00:23:54,360 --> 00:23:56,080 And she always had her camera. 334 00:23:57,800 --> 00:24:02,480 I remember Vivian taking photographs of the kids 335 00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:05,000 as they were just lounging around 336 00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:11,200 and being surprised that there was no eye contact, 337 00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:14,000 she was just into her viewfinder. 338 00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:18,040 And...it was fascinating... 339 00:24:18,040 --> 00:24:23,160 to see somebody who was er... 340 00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:26,560 part of the group, 341 00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:32,920 but also had found a way to...to wall herself off from it. 342 00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:38,960 Her favourite camera helped with this. 343 00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:42,160 This is the same model as her first Rolleiflex, this opens... 344 00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:45,920 'Artist and lecturer Pamela Bannos showed us how. 345 00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:50,360 'She's been researching Vivian's life work and tools.' 346 00:24:50,360 --> 00:24:52,720 So we look through this viewfinder. 347 00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:55,960 You can see how difficult that is to see, to get accustomed to. 348 00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:58,120 She looked straight down... Yeah. ..and out. 349 00:24:58,120 --> 00:24:59,560 So this is a twin-lens camera, 350 00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:01,680 you're actually looking through this upper lens 351 00:25:01,680 --> 00:25:04,080 and the photograph is being made through the lower lens. 352 00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:06,080 One thumb would turn this dial, 353 00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:08,080 the other thumb would turn this dial, 354 00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:11,280 we press that button and we've made the picture. Down in there to look... 355 00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:13,240 'To look down in a camera 356 00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:16,480 'means you're not making eye contact with people,' 357 00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:20,120 and for a woman photographer, 358 00:25:20,120 --> 00:25:22,600 it was a good disguise, 359 00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:25,640 because, to be out on the streets, 360 00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:29,160 you had to have the personality for it, 361 00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:35,960 but you also needed a tool that allowed you to stay invisible. 362 00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:38,480 And she looked like a schoolmarm, 363 00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:40,880 she looked innocent - 364 00:25:40,880 --> 00:25:47,080 it allowed her to get into the living space of lots of people. 365 00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:55,280 When I look back at all the pictures, 366 00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:58,520 she was clearly focusing in 367 00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:02,320 on the relationship of children and their parents. 368 00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:08,800 Some of it was very sweet, 369 00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:13,800 but some of it was...I think maybe judgemental. 370 00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:18,240 It may also have been 371 00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:23,080 that she was noticing something about that community, 372 00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:29,080 some kind of...edginess and picking up on it. 373 00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:39,320 The camera presented this magical transition for her 374 00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:44,240 that allowed her to see people and to get places 375 00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:47,440 without being...caught doing it, 376 00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:52,960 and people allowed it because she wasn't there. 377 00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:57,360 She was just in the viewfinder. 378 00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:04,280 In order to live in someone else's family and care for their kids, 379 00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:09,200 you have to be both present and absent at the same time. 380 00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:13,080 And she knew how to achieve that kind of balance 381 00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:15,920 and she carried it out, it seems to me, 382 00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:19,760 in her work on the street too - she's definitely non-threatening. 383 00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:29,120 Her eye was so excellent for catching 384 00:27:29,120 --> 00:27:35,120 not just the character of the people she was photographing, 385 00:27:35,120 --> 00:27:40,680 but also the moment in history. 386 00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:48,360 She got Chicago in the '50s and early '60s in a very precise way, 387 00:27:48,360 --> 00:27:54,920 she got the things that...that made it that moment. 388 00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:04,320 There was always a degree of separation 389 00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:07,680 between Vivian and everyone else. 390 00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:10,560 She was clearly a recluse. 391 00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:16,720 The south here was er...my dad's dental office 392 00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:22,440 and upstairs was a room that Dad had given to Miss Maier to stay. 393 00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:26,120 She actually completely filled the room with newspapers 394 00:28:26,120 --> 00:28:27,840 and pictures and stuff, 395 00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:31,080 so much that my dad had to put a steel jack underneath 396 00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:32,560 to hold the floor up 397 00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:34,960 and he couldn't figure out why the ceiling was sagging. 398 00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:38,840 She did hoard things 399 00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:41,840 and she brought a lot of possessions into the house. 400 00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:45,280 Her bedroom, initially, was very simple 401 00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:47,680 and, in no short order, 402 00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:51,040 she ended up bringing in all her possessions - 403 00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:56,520 boxes, newspapers, er...lots of clothes, 404 00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:58,240 lots of different items, 405 00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:06,240 and it got to the point where this sparsely populated room was unbelievably crowded 406 00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:10,480 and, in fact, you had to almost narrow your way in 407 00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:13,680 on the occasions that she, you know, she'd let you in, 408 00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:15,960 because she was very, very private. 409 00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:20,920 It was really, really strange to see so many pictures of myself. 410 00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:24,360 I saw a few pictures when I was very little... 411 00:29:27,760 --> 00:29:30,800 ..but after that, no, I mean, she, she kept them all to herself, 412 00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:32,280 so no, I had no clue. 413 00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:40,160 My mom was a photography editor for newspapers, 414 00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:42,560 she worked with a lot of photographers, 415 00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:47,360 but Miss Maier never, ever showed her any of the photos, 416 00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:49,760 so it was kind of unusual that way. 417 00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:55,960 I always called her Miss Maier 418 00:29:55,960 --> 00:29:59,200 and that was what she wanted me to call her, 419 00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:02,560 or my parents. Never Vivian, 420 00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:07,640 and she would take your head off if you used anything else. 421 00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:12,600 Sometimes she would hand her box camera to me 422 00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:14,800 and she wanted me to take a picture of herself. 423 00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:16,680 And I think you took that picture. 424 00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:20,920 Let's see, half her head cut off and... Yeah, that would be me. 425 00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:22,840 'She wanted that focus of that camera' 426 00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:25,080 just so. And she'd be frustrated 427 00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:29,080 because she didn't think I could get it to the point where she wanted it. 428 00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:36,760 She told me about the importance of the contrast between dark and light. 429 00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:45,760 When we'd go on our walks, 430 00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:47,920 she'd take me all over the place. 431 00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:17,080 After she got done the supper, she would leave, 432 00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:19,880 and she would walk to this train station 433 00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:21,760 headed towards Chicago area. 434 00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:30,640 That's all we knew. I never heard where she went. 435 00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:32,160 She never told anybody... 436 00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:35,880 ..and she would be very angry if we asked. 437 00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:47,920 Whenever she could, Vivian would take the train 438 00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:51,200 from the northern suburbs, where she worked, to downtown Chicago. 439 00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:14,400 TRAIN TANNOY: Doors closing. 440 00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:17,920 The pictures that we're looking at were all taken 441 00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:19,800 within just a few blocks of here. 442 00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:23,880 The man sitting by an old subway station 443 00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:27,840 probably would have been taken right here. He was kind of panhandling. 444 00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:33,240 It was such a contrast to the life that she was leading in the suburbs. 445 00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:34,680 She was looking for people. 446 00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:39,520 The best way to capture the energy of a city 447 00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:41,800 and to understand the city is on the streets. 448 00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:44,520 She wasn't on a tour bus, she wasn't from afar, 449 00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:46,200 she was down at street level. 450 00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:51,520 Some of them aren't quite down and out, are they? 451 00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:57,440 Some of them are elderly people who are rather ornate in their own way. 452 00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:00,440 It's funny because, as you look at these different pictures, 453 00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:02,640 so many were taken on this corner. 454 00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:05,280 The Marshall Field's clocks were kind of a meeting place - 455 00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:08,640 people would say, "Meet me under the Marshall Field's clock." 456 00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:19,240 "The camera is an instrument of detection. 457 00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:23,240 "We photograph not only what we know, but also what we don't know." 458 00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:46,520 We're going on to the South Side to meet Sara Paretsky, 459 00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:50,920 a detective writer whose heroine also walked these mean streets. 460 00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:56,280 The danger that this area, wandering around here - I mean, 461 00:33:56,280 --> 00:34:00,560 how do you see that mystery woman side of Vivian? 462 00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:04,200 My sense of her was that she didn't think about it, 463 00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,840 that she was so focused on her quest 464 00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:11,040 that she didn't think about whether she was personally at risk. 465 00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:20,560 I think she had an intense interest in people who, in some ways, 466 00:34:20,560 --> 00:34:23,200 were like her, and were on the margins 467 00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:26,120 of the more glittery world 468 00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:30,320 that she worked for but wasn't part of. 469 00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:32,920 I think it can be reassuring 470 00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,280 to know that you're not alone 471 00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:40,560 in that kind of outsider world. 472 00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:43,640 And also, you know, she worked hard for a living 473 00:34:43,640 --> 00:34:47,680 and these are people who worked hard for a living. 474 00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,840 I also get a sense of... 475 00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:55,920 a kind of a loneliness or anomie that is, is really painful, 476 00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:59,480 and I wonder if she selected those shots 477 00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:02,480 out of her own sense of loneliness. 478 00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:05,320 She must have felt 479 00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:07,800 that there was something about her that was rootless, 480 00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,080 that wasn't weighted down, and that 481 00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:13,920 as many images as she could take somehow gave her weight. 482 00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:19,480 Photography can be kind of a lonely profession, 483 00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:22,040 and it's something that one actually 484 00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:24,240 has a lot of alone-time with. 485 00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:30,560 That's probably part of her success, 486 00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:32,560 she had a lot of alone-time. 487 00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:36,560 This is how she managed to do what she did. 488 00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:47,360 She actually was the personification of finding art. 489 00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:50,320 She walked into a picture, she saw it happening, 490 00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:52,400 she took a picture and she left. 491 00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:58,280 Camera shop staff like Pat were among the few 492 00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:01,000 who ever got to see any of Vivian's pictures. 493 00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:04,680 She mostly showed me street scenes, 494 00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:07,160 sometimes some pretty bad neighbourhoods. 495 00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:10,920 This woman was going on foot. 496 00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:14,640 I'm also surprised that she just emerged unscathed. 497 00:36:14,640 --> 00:36:16,680 She would have been prey to someone 498 00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:20,080 who would have wanted the camera or something. 499 00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:23,800 I've been here since I was 14 500 00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:25,960 and I can remember her sort of coming in 501 00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:30,880 as early as that. And...it didn't matter the weather outside, 502 00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:34,480 but mainly, it was late in the afternoons. 503 00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:39,280 Yeah, she wore heavy er...shit-kicker shoes, 504 00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:42,720 long skirts, dark clothing, wintertime heavy coats, 505 00:36:42,720 --> 00:36:43,880 lots of scarves. 506 00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:49,160 She treated people as people and whether she liked people, 507 00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:52,840 that was another story that day or she didn't like people that day. 508 00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:56,560 And she did not like women who were trying to act like women. 509 00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:02,880 If you had make-up on, I think she basically would cut you off. 510 00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:05,920 Men - aggressive or too many questions. 511 00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:08,320 "Goodbye - could someone else take care of me?" 512 00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:10,840 I mean, she was right to the point. 513 00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:15,920 Sometimes, very rarely, she would open up the roll, to decide... 514 00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:19,960 She'd say, "Come here," and you know, "You can look at them with me." 515 00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:22,400 But not too often, mainly it was private. 516 00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:30,400 I don't honestly remember the pictures, 517 00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:33,640 just that it was black and white and it was people things. 518 00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:44,400 With a Rolleiflex, she had just 12 shots 519 00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:46,520 and then had to reload the film - 520 00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:48,400 not easy in the open air. 521 00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:51,320 She shot about a roll of film a day. 522 00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:56,360 She spent virtually all her earnings on film, equipment and storage. 523 00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:01,120 Unlike most photographers, 524 00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:04,280 Vivian tended to take just one shot and move on. 525 00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:05,920 Her hit rate was phenomenal. 526 00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:13,600 This is a roll of film, the order in which they were taken. 527 00:38:13,600 --> 00:38:18,200 It's kids getting on a bus in the morning for school. 528 00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:20,040 She drops them off, 529 00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:23,160 and then she heads downtown and she starts photographing. 530 00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:26,640 You really get this sense of a day in the life or of a diary here, 531 00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:29,400 and you can see how she moves through the street. 532 00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:31,600 If you put it all in a row 533 00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:33,360 you would see one woman's life 534 00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:37,160 unfolding on film in this way - 535 00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:42,680 you'd have an unbroken string of images of what she saw, 536 00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:45,560 of what her experiences were. 537 00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:48,880 This is what her big project was, it was her life. 538 00:38:51,240 --> 00:38:54,000 It was experiencing life through photography. 539 00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:01,200 She'll come upon somebody 540 00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:05,640 who seems to be either in crisis or contemplating something, 541 00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:09,880 people who seemed to be kind of lost in, in a world of deep thought... 542 00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:14,880 ..and she was able to capture this image 543 00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:18,240 and this is really a portrait, it's a portrait of a person, 544 00:39:18,240 --> 00:39:21,920 it's not just a shot of a random person walking down the street, 545 00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,440 she's captured a real, raw emotion here. 546 00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:31,880 As interested as she was in other people, 547 00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:35,200 she gave away very little about herself. 548 00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:39,040 My father hired her in part because she had a European background, 549 00:39:39,040 --> 00:39:41,240 which my father did as well. 550 00:39:41,240 --> 00:39:44,040 Oftentimes, around the dinner table, for example, 551 00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:45,640 they would speak in French. 552 00:39:47,960 --> 00:39:52,120 Vivian was a rather opinionated woman. 553 00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:54,160 She had political leanings 554 00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:57,680 that I think were more on the left and feminist, 555 00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:01,920 but I would say that, wholly apart from her political opinions 556 00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:04,760 is perhaps the way that she carried them off. 557 00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:08,240 She was an extremely abrasive person, 558 00:40:08,240 --> 00:40:12,120 and often times it was pretty much in your face. And that was Vivian. 559 00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:15,680 When people tried to elicit information about her, 560 00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:18,560 she would quickly change the topic. 561 00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:21,040 In terms of her upbringing and background, 562 00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:24,960 there was nothing that I ever really...got to know. 563 00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:31,120 She was creating a play for children in the backyard 564 00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:33,760 and she would assign roles to all the children. 565 00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:38,480 They said, "Well, what role are you going to play?" 566 00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:41,280 And she just looked around and said, "I'll be the mystery woman." 567 00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:46,000 There were times when the parents would ask her, 568 00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:51,080 "So you lived in France, was that during the Occupation?" 569 00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:53,720 And she'd respond, "Maybe." 570 00:40:53,720 --> 00:40:58,360 So she really enjoyed having this air of mystery. 571 00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:00,760 And I think the mystery is still there. 572 00:41:04,080 --> 00:41:07,000 In just the area of Chicago where Vivian lived, 573 00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,800 Pamela Bannos is doing forensic research 574 00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:13,200 on what she calls Vivian Maier's fractured archive. 575 00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:16,240 Split between the different owners. 576 00:41:16,240 --> 00:41:18,400 These are ones that Vivian chose. 577 00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:19,920 That she chose to save. 578 00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:23,480 She's also digging deep into Vivian's mysterious past. 579 00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:25,480 ..Hold in her hand and look at... 580 00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:27,440 I see Vivian Maier as a woman 581 00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:31,840 who is the product of the legacy of the French women before her. 582 00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:37,280 She is the daughter of a woman 583 00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:39,040 who was the daughter of another woman 584 00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:42,400 who were all live-in servants in New York. 585 00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:47,680 She is also today somebody else entirely, 586 00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:52,040 who I think has been invented by people who love a good story, maybe. 587 00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:54,320 THEY CHUCKLE 588 00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:56,880 Her grandmother, Eugenie Jaussaud, 589 00:41:56,880 --> 00:41:59,920 had a child out of wedlock at the age of 16. 590 00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:06,040 She left the Champsaur Valley, of France, sort of a shamed woman. 591 00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:11,240 She arrives in New York in 1901, 592 00:42:11,240 --> 00:42:13,200 leaving her baby behind, 593 00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:16,120 and then essentially becomes a live-in cook 594 00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:17,920 for the rest of her life. 595 00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:19,880 So Vivian's grandmother Eugenie 596 00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:22,920 leaves her illegitimate daughter behind in France 597 00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:26,120 to become a cook - and then what happens? 598 00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:31,200 In 1914, her daughter, Maria Jaussaud, arrives in Manhattan, 599 00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:34,680 travelling with an American woman, as her private maid. 600 00:42:36,680 --> 00:42:39,440 She's in New York, never having seen her mother. 601 00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:46,920 In 1919, Vivian's mother married her father, 602 00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,360 an Austrian-Hungarian, Charles Maier. 603 00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:53,240 And on her marriage certificate, 604 00:42:53,240 --> 00:42:55,040 she changes her parents' names 605 00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:57,560 to make it look as though she's legitimate. 606 00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:00,160 She corrects the family history, 607 00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:03,720 so she sort of invents herself at this point, at least on paper. 608 00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:09,160 This Vivian Maier story is filled with intrigue and secrecy 609 00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:11,880 and deception and privacy, 610 00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:14,120 which I think is a theme that goes throughout. 611 00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:18,800 Vivian told people she was born in France, 612 00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:19,960 but in fact 613 00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:22,800 she was born in Manhattan in 1926. 614 00:43:26,240 --> 00:43:29,520 Aged four, Vivian was living in St Mary's Street, in the Bronx, 615 00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:34,240 with her mother, but without her father or her elder brother. 616 00:43:34,240 --> 00:43:35,920 But, there's a woman living with them 617 00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:38,120 from a neighbouring village in France - 618 00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:41,360 a studio photographer, Jeanne Bertrand. 619 00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:45,160 Maybe she had some influence on Vivian, the photographer to be. 620 00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:50,760 Jeanne Bertrand had had an illegitimate child 621 00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:53,000 whom she'd given up to adoption, 622 00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:55,720 and she'd since had a mental breakdown. 623 00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:00,200 We have these French women with no families, 624 00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:02,640 we have babies with no fathers, 625 00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:07,920 we have this connection of women who are displaced, 626 00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:10,960 who then end up living with other families 627 00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:14,640 or give their children to other families or give their children up. 628 00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:22,880 Vivian Maier appears to have had very few personal relationships. 629 00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:24,560 She certainly never got married, 630 00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:27,040 we don't know of any, any other relationship. 631 00:44:27,040 --> 00:44:29,840 So that would suggest this displacement 632 00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,400 comes from the circumstances. Yes. 633 00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:44,200 In 1932, Pamela finds Vivian's mother, 634 00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:47,880 using the Swiss Benevolent Society, home for single women, 635 00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:50,960 as her address in an advert she places in the paper 636 00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:53,320 for a job as a chambermaid. 637 00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:56,200 She's now calling herself Mademoiselle Jaussaud. 638 00:44:57,920 --> 00:44:59,720 Within months, she gives up 639 00:44:59,720 --> 00:45:02,760 and they go to France for six years. 640 00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:13,760 Vivian was to live in her mother and grandmother's village in France 641 00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:15,880 from the age of six to 12. 642 00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:20,640 She was seen as something of an outsider. 643 00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:28,000 Later, Vivian was to take thousands of photographs here. 644 00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:32,120 WOMAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH 645 00:45:32,120 --> 00:45:35,920 TRANSLATION: She captured my attention because she made my imagination work. 646 00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:40,200 She came from America. 647 00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:47,960 It's El Dorado, especially for a little girl of ten. 648 00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:51,800 For me, she was an extra-terrestrial 649 00:45:51,800 --> 00:45:54,360 who had arrived from the United States. 650 00:45:56,160 --> 00:45:58,960 She had a turned-up nose 651 00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:00,880 and a runny nose. 652 00:46:01,880 --> 00:46:07,400 The flat where they stayed was not very comfortable, or very warm. 653 00:46:08,720 --> 00:46:10,600 MAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH 654 00:46:10,600 --> 00:46:13,200 TRANSLATION: She didn't think like us at all. 655 00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:19,320 I remember one day, we noticed some chickens scratching in a farmyard. 656 00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:23,600 She was disgusted, and decided never to eat eggs again. 657 00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:31,160 All the boys in the village were very pleased to be in her company. 658 00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:33,760 She was a bit reserved. 659 00:46:35,120 --> 00:46:40,400 I'd often see her in the village square playing Marelle, 660 00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,880 a game where you draw squares - 661 00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:45,960 there's hell and heaven, paradise, 662 00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:48,720 and you jump by throwing a stone. 663 00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:53,880 I remember she threw it a long way. 664 00:46:57,320 --> 00:46:59,200 We were all looking at her knickers. 665 00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:03,920 SHE CHUCKLES 666 00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:07,040 TRANSLATION: That's my mother, my mother! 667 00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:13,160 In the shop, 668 00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,560 we had a cake shop... 669 00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:19,880 It's good, this photo. I'd like to have it. 670 00:47:21,040 --> 00:47:23,040 Usually, she was preoccupied, 671 00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:24,880 there was so much work, 672 00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:26,360 but here, she looks calm. 673 00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:40,840 TRANSLATION: All that is very, very long ago. 674 00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:48,280 After 12 more years in New York, 675 00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:52,720 a 24-year-old Vivian visited the village again. 676 00:47:52,720 --> 00:47:55,000 It was soon after the Second World War. 677 00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:03,120 How she learned to use a camera remains a mystery, 678 00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:04,960 but she knew what she was doing. 679 00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:08,400 These are her first known pictures, 680 00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:11,600 previously dismissed as snapshots. 681 00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:13,840 When I started looking through these pictures, 682 00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:17,080 I started wondering which photographs these people were talking about, 683 00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:19,560 because what I was seeing was extremely different. 684 00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:23,560 This is not a child working with an innocent machine, 685 00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:26,080 this is a woman who knows how to work a camera. 686 00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:30,560 This is the box camera, the humble snapshot camera. 687 00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:35,040 Literally, it has one, one shutter speed, and no other adjustment. 688 00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:38,640 And the suggestion is that this is what she used in, in France. Right. 689 00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:41,120 But she wasn't, in fact she might have been using a camera 690 00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:42,760 not dissimilar to this. Correct. 691 00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:46,200 This particular camera is probably from the 1940s. 692 00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:50,040 You can focus it, you can adjust the shutter speeds, 693 00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:51,640 you can adjust the apertures, 694 00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:53,280 you could fold it down 695 00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:55,520 and it collapses into itself. 696 00:48:55,520 --> 00:48:58,640 This could also be considered a traveller's camera. 697 00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:06,280 She was developing the skills that would become her hallmark. 698 00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:14,160 Right early on, 699 00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:20,000 you see her observe a character sitting on a stoop or something 700 00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:23,160 in a public space, and she works around him. 701 00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:30,680 She followed her inner line of curiosity, 702 00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:36,960 and it's that that establishes an artistic tendency, 703 00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:38,920 cos the amateur doesn't do that. 704 00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:43,200 Vivian was in France to sort out the sale of a farm 705 00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:47,720 that belonged to her great-aunt, who'd died during the war. 706 00:49:47,720 --> 00:49:51,600 It was called Beauregard, "beautiful view". 707 00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:56,800 Her grandfather lived nearby. 708 00:49:56,800 --> 00:50:01,040 He was poor, teased by the village boys, almost an outcast. 709 00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:06,080 It was a horrible echo of what would happen to Vivian herself 710 00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:10,480 and to her mother, who would end up in a seedy hotel in New York. 711 00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:14,080 Nelly lived next door. 712 00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:15,360 SHE SPEAKS IN FRENCH 713 00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:16,600 TRANSLATION: It's me there, 714 00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:18,840 like two sisters. 715 00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:22,480 Wherever I went, she'd come with me. 716 00:50:22,480 --> 00:50:26,440 What everybody said was, they all thought she was a spy, 717 00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:29,200 because she took photographs all over the place. 718 00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:35,640 My parents and I never thought anything like that. 719 00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:41,400 Look at her there, she's beautiful, it looks just like her. 720 00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:45,360 She was refined, and sincere above all. 721 00:50:45,360 --> 00:50:48,480 That's what I remember about her. 722 00:50:51,240 --> 00:50:55,280 On Sundays, we'd all go to dances, but she didn't go to dances. 723 00:50:58,520 --> 00:51:00,640 SHE CLEARS HER THROAT 724 00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:06,360 And she never married, she never made a life for herself. 725 00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:10,520 Yet she's a pretty woman. 726 00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:17,680 This morning, you've brought me something 727 00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:20,240 which has made me very happy - to see her again. 728 00:51:21,720 --> 00:51:23,920 It was a joy. 729 00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:31,600 Vivian roamed the area, taking views of mountains and monuments. 730 00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:34,440 She was, it seems, making postcards 731 00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:37,400 through the camera shop in the village, 732 00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:39,120 so maybe, at this point, 733 00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:42,240 she was hoping to make photography into a career. 734 00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:48,040 The spy story grew - 735 00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:51,480 and the idea that she had a gun to defend herself. 736 00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:55,560 A woman wandering alone is the stuff from which myths are made. 737 00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:04,840 In the nearby town of Gap 738 00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:07,640 she photographed a Communist Party rally, 739 00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:11,080 and she was always seeking out people living on the edge. 740 00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:19,720 In the spring of 1951, 741 00:52:19,720 --> 00:52:22,920 she heads back across the ocean to New York. 742 00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:29,640 It's as though Vivian was seeing the city 743 00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:32,880 in which she'd spent most of her life for the first time. 744 00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:38,960 'She's 26 years old when she's doing this - 745 00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:42,520 'hopeful years, when you have your life ahead of you. 746 00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:45,280 'She's learned everything so fast, she's learned how to look 747 00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:47,520 'and she's going to places that are new. 748 00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:52,680 'We're actually walking in her footsteps. 749 00:52:56,440 --> 00:52:59,520 'It feels sort of uncanny to look through the camera 750 00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:00,920 'and see the same things.' 751 00:53:05,360 --> 00:53:08,640 And then, I guarantee you she shoots the East River right here. 752 00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:11,480 This is obviously something that we can catch better on foot 753 00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:12,800 than, than in a car. 754 00:53:20,440 --> 00:53:22,240 She goes to these heights 755 00:53:22,240 --> 00:53:23,920 and creates these vistas. 756 00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:25,880 These reminded me of the photographs 757 00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:28,080 that she had shot in the Alps, in France, 758 00:53:28,080 --> 00:53:29,760 when she was there in 1950. 759 00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:36,480 Now, like her grandmother and mother before her, 760 00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:40,000 she turned to domestic service and started to work as a nanny. 761 00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:44,760 And, ever more intensely, as a photographer. 762 00:53:47,240 --> 00:53:50,040 She's on the balcony of the Hotel Astor for the Macy's Day Parade. 763 00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:51,800 You can see from the right 764 00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:54,160 she's actually standing with a bunch of children. 765 00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:57,680 These children might be her charges, mightn't they? They might be, right. 766 00:53:57,680 --> 00:53:59,360 She gets access to these places 767 00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:02,400 because she's working for wealthy families who get access to places. 768 00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:09,480 But often, she creates her own access. 769 00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:12,400 So she's standing in the shadow here, by this wall, 770 00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:14,840 seeing Salvador Dali behind that post, 771 00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:17,120 actually giving an autograph to a woman 772 00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:19,440 at the doorway to the Museum Of Modern Art. 773 00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:25,800 She actually walks down the street here following Dali, 774 00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:29,480 and shoots the second photograph 775 00:54:29,480 --> 00:54:32,560 and she's caught him in this moment. 776 00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:34,560 She dates the photograph 777 00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:38,160 to the 24th of January, 1952, 778 00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:40,440 and this is the time when there's the exhibition 779 00:54:40,440 --> 00:54:43,360 Five French Photographers at the Museum Of Modern Art. 780 00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:45,800 So I'm assuming that she crossed that doorway 781 00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:49,160 and she went into the museum and she saw this exhibition. 782 00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:57,120 She was teaching herself about photography, 783 00:54:57,120 --> 00:55:01,080 and it's now that Vivian made the switch to her trademark camera, 784 00:55:01,080 --> 00:55:02,520 the Rolleiflex, 785 00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:04,520 with its large square negative. 786 00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:08,480 It's the first Rolleiflex picture I found 787 00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:10,360 and it's taken on the 12th of July, 1952, 788 00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:12,440 as she writes on the back of the print. 789 00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:17,160 She's capturing the vivid contrast of the city. 790 00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:19,360 She's found her subject matter. 791 00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:28,200 In 1952, the hottest summer on record in New York, 792 00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:30,880 Vivian is crossing the city with her new camera. 793 00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:42,760 This is the Third Avenue train that she took up and down 794 00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:46,120 and when it gets down below a certain point, it's the Bowery. 795 00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:54,240 So by the time she leaves New York, the train has been dismantled. 796 00:55:58,360 --> 00:56:02,480 Now, the Bowery is as gentrified as the rest of Manhattan, 797 00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:05,680 but then, it was a byword for drunks and down and outs. 798 00:56:06,680 --> 00:56:08,480 We're over by the Bowery bums, 799 00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:10,600 where we have, like, people like this man, 800 00:56:10,600 --> 00:56:14,720 who has been beat up and he's asleep or he's unconscious in his cart, 801 00:56:14,720 --> 00:56:18,280 and men who are alcoholics and passed out on the sidewalk. 802 00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:21,080 And this sunny summer day where she's here. 803 00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:25,520 And she's actually standing over there 804 00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:28,040 taking a photograph of this man, who's looking down at her 805 00:56:28,040 --> 00:56:30,000 because she's got her Rolleiflex at her waist. 806 00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:34,400 He's looking at us, but he's looking into the lens in this picture. 807 00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:37,440 She had to be about three feet away to get a close-up. 808 00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:48,280 To go up and photograph a stranger on the street, 809 00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:51,960 you have to hold your ground and be fearless 810 00:56:51,960 --> 00:56:56,080 and take what you want, because it's yours. 811 00:56:58,800 --> 00:57:02,520 You could see that there was something that she was interested in, 812 00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:07,560 that she was going to, drawn to, day after day. 813 00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:11,080 She would keep on working certain themes - the underdog, 814 00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:14,200 the cast-aside, 815 00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:16,240 the worker. 816 00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:22,920 "You are too young to fall asleep forever. 817 00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:26,760 "And when you sleep, you remind me of the dead." 818 00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:33,920 She has the tools, and her work is really taking off 819 00:57:33,920 --> 00:57:36,160 and so is she. 820 00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:41,600 She planned a whole year away, but she needed a new passport. 821 00:57:41,600 --> 00:57:44,360 So these images show how she kept her own archive 822 00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:46,640 by photographing her own documents. 823 00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:59,440 This is the photograph of her 1959 passport application 824 00:57:59,440 --> 00:58:03,080 that shows she's lied about her parents' death. 825 00:58:03,080 --> 00:58:05,600 She checks that both of her parents are deceased. 826 00:58:05,600 --> 00:58:08,760 She checks... She checks that both of her parents are deceased 827 00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:11,720 and, in fact, also eliminates her mother's name 828 00:58:11,720 --> 00:58:13,760 from the application entirely. 829 00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,200 'In fact, both her parents lived another ten years, 830 00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:20,240 'but in 1959, they're dead to her. 831 00:58:20,240 --> 00:58:22,040 'She's cut loose.' 832 00:58:24,720 --> 00:58:26,960 She actually lists all the places she's going. 833 00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:29,720 She's going to the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indochina, 834 00:58:29,720 --> 00:58:32,600 Siam, East Indies, Malaysia - 835 00:58:32,600 --> 00:58:35,240 and she did this tour. 836 00:58:35,240 --> 00:58:37,480 She actually did this tour? She did this tour. 837 00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:41,400 And did she take many photographs? She took thousands of photographs. 838 00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:45,720 So more than 50 years ago, 839 00:58:45,720 --> 00:58:48,800 a single nanny sets off on a world tour. 840 00:58:48,800 --> 00:58:53,280 This is before motorways, before mass air travel, before gap years. 841 00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:56,040 She fits in a second visit to her village in France 842 00:58:56,040 --> 00:58:59,360 to pick up a cheque from her great-aunt's property. 843 00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:02,440 This time, she also takes in Versailles and the Louvre. 844 00:59:02,440 --> 00:59:04,920 People make an issue of her being untaught, 845 00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:06,760 but she was teaching herself. 846 00:59:08,400 --> 00:59:10,120 Her visit to Paris coincides 847 00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:11,800 with that of the US President, 848 00:59:11,800 --> 00:59:14,000 so she shoots that too. 849 00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:15,480 She's like a reporter, 850 00:59:15,480 --> 00:59:17,960 but with no newspaper, no outlet. 851 00:59:55,520 --> 00:59:58,760 It's really about being alive to the world, 852 00:59:58,760 --> 01:00:00,680 out in the world, 853 01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:07,440 and seeing yet another moment of...of consciousness 854 01:00:07,440 --> 01:00:12,160 in which an awakened state is what it's all about. 855 01:00:12,160 --> 01:00:16,200 That you are privileged to see that yet again, 856 01:00:16,200 --> 01:00:18,840 this life is doing this for me. 857 01:00:18,840 --> 01:00:22,520 You're dealing with the disappearing moment. 858 01:00:22,520 --> 01:00:24,240 It's there and it's gone, 859 01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:29,520 and the only way that...it's recognised as having happened 860 01:00:29,520 --> 01:00:32,760 is you observing it, knowing it and photographing it. 861 01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:39,200 So you are the repository and, and I, I think that...you know, 862 01:00:39,200 --> 01:00:42,680 it's great if you can make prints out of it and share this, 863 01:00:42,680 --> 01:00:45,240 but, at a certain point, if you've done it long enough, 864 01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:47,440 you don't really, you don't really have to, 865 01:00:47,440 --> 01:00:49,200 it's for you, it's just for you. 866 01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:55,480 But maybe working alone with no audience 867 01:00:55,480 --> 01:00:57,560 was too much of a strain in the end. 868 01:00:59,480 --> 01:01:01,960 It seems the centre would not hold. 869 01:01:05,080 --> 01:01:06,600 The world had opened up, 870 01:01:06,600 --> 01:01:09,640 but by the late '60s, was closing in for Vivian. 871 01:01:21,280 --> 01:01:22,600 The shelter she'd found 872 01:01:22,600 --> 01:01:24,560 with the Ginsberg family in Chicago 873 01:01:24,560 --> 01:01:26,200 came to an end. 874 01:01:28,880 --> 01:01:32,280 It wasn't until all the Ginsberg boys went to college 875 01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:33,960 that finally Mrs Ginsberg said, 876 01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:36,040 "Vivian, maybe it's time now for you to go on." 877 01:01:38,320 --> 01:01:41,320 And breaking up was very hard for them and the family. 878 01:01:43,320 --> 01:01:48,360 The Ginsberg family very prominently said that she was like Mary Poppins. 879 01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:51,160 Almost all the other families that I've talked to 880 01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:56,080 all say that Mary Poppins is about the last adjective...phrase 881 01:01:56,080 --> 01:01:58,600 that they would use in talking about Vivian. 882 01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:03,040 She did have her dark side and she had her light sides. 883 01:02:04,560 --> 01:02:06,440 When she taught me, that was wonderful, 884 01:02:06,440 --> 01:02:07,880 that was just wonderful. 885 01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:11,600 But, you know, 886 01:02:11,600 --> 01:02:14,760 her emotions could get better of her sometimes, and so... 887 01:02:14,760 --> 01:02:16,320 just leave her be. 888 01:02:20,880 --> 01:02:23,360 Oh, you didn't want her to get angry with you, believe me. 889 01:02:29,360 --> 01:02:31,400 Where there'd been pleasure, excitement, 890 01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:34,400 increasingly there was disappointment and dread. 891 01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:39,720 She witnessed the Chicago riots, in 1968. 892 01:02:46,320 --> 01:02:48,520 Bobby Kennedy being assassinated, 893 01:02:48,520 --> 01:02:50,520 the chaos that was going on in '68 894 01:02:50,520 --> 01:02:53,880 and her photography, very much, you get that sense of it. 895 01:02:55,880 --> 01:02:57,160 Her work after that, 896 01:02:57,160 --> 01:02:59,320 she would go to the same places, she would go, 897 01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:01,040 take the same kinds of walks, 898 01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:04,840 but instead of noticing beautiful abstractions on the sidewalk 899 01:03:04,840 --> 01:03:08,840 and beautiful light coming through trees, she'd start to see garbage. 900 01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:13,960 When you see the weight of all these images, thousands of images, 901 01:03:13,960 --> 01:03:17,400 just the mildewing, wet newspapers and garbage cans... 902 01:03:19,040 --> 01:03:22,040 ..it, there's a weight to it and there's, there's a power to it 903 01:03:22,040 --> 01:03:26,560 and I don't think you can deny that it somehow is linked to who she was. 904 01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:30,360 It was all bad news. 905 01:03:30,360 --> 01:03:32,920 It was as if she was drowning, 906 01:03:32,920 --> 01:03:36,440 as if she'd given up on people. 907 01:03:54,000 --> 01:03:57,000 As the years passed, her jobs got shorter, 908 01:03:57,000 --> 01:04:00,440 her hoarding and secretive behaviour more extreme. 909 01:04:05,320 --> 01:04:08,320 It was a little bit of a mystery, what she did during the weekends, 910 01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:10,400 where she stayed. 911 01:04:10,400 --> 01:04:13,480 She would, you know, take her belongings, her possessions, 912 01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:17,720 often bags...of clothes that she would, she would have, 913 01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:19,440 always with her camera, 914 01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:23,000 and likewise, she would return sometimes with, you know, 915 01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:26,480 new bags and more clothing. 916 01:04:34,160 --> 01:04:37,400 No work exists beyond the 1980s, 917 01:04:37,400 --> 01:04:39,480 but she was still carrying her camera, 918 01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:41,760 still putting rolls of film 919 01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:44,320 in her own personal bucket at Central Cameras, 920 01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:47,360 rolls she couldn't afford to collect. 921 01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:50,120 That was her major difficulty 922 01:04:50,120 --> 01:04:52,560 in the last 15, 20 years - 923 01:04:52,560 --> 01:04:55,080 economics, not having enough economics. 924 01:04:56,160 --> 01:04:59,160 She couldn't afford all of the things that she wanted. 925 01:05:00,560 --> 01:05:02,960 Maybe more work will still emerge, 926 01:05:02,960 --> 01:05:06,520 but maybe she would have preferred if it didn't. 927 01:05:06,520 --> 01:05:10,120 I don't think she would like it at all, no. 928 01:05:11,160 --> 01:05:14,600 There's too much going on, 929 01:05:14,600 --> 01:05:17,440 too much delving into who she was or what she was 930 01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:19,120 and why was she this and so on, 931 01:05:19,120 --> 01:05:22,120 and the trickle downs and the trickle ups and, hey, 932 01:05:22,120 --> 01:05:25,800 I like taking pictures - that was her release, that was her world. 933 01:05:27,000 --> 01:05:31,080 I didn't go to the shows to see the interpretation of other people 934 01:05:31,080 --> 01:05:34,720 of what they felt about her, cos I have my own feelings about her 935 01:05:34,720 --> 01:05:36,360 and I respect the way she was. 936 01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:38,160 Maybe I would have learned something, 937 01:05:38,160 --> 01:05:39,840 but would it have been the truth? 938 01:05:39,840 --> 01:05:43,240 It would have been someone else's interpretation of a truth. 939 01:05:46,120 --> 01:05:48,760 Yet she's caught the imagination of a world 940 01:05:48,760 --> 01:05:52,720 captivated with taking pictures incessantly on their phones. 941 01:05:54,200 --> 01:05:55,600 Vivian has gone viral. 942 01:05:57,240 --> 01:05:59,520 She now lives on the web, 943 01:05:59,520 --> 01:06:02,880 but she lived in her imagination. 944 01:06:02,880 --> 01:06:06,280 Her compulsion to take pictures was her life. 945 01:06:07,640 --> 01:06:09,840 It's what she has left behind. 946 01:06:11,520 --> 01:06:15,480 Some of the pictures of Vivian's were from when I was a kid, 947 01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:19,160 cos I was probably there, and I didn't even realise. 948 01:06:21,600 --> 01:06:23,200 I probably walked past her, 949 01:06:23,200 --> 01:06:24,840 but I never would have known. 950 01:06:26,400 --> 01:06:27,600 Can you contact them 951 01:06:27,600 --> 01:06:31,200 and see what's happening with the main show in Shanghai? Yeah... 952 01:06:31,200 --> 01:06:35,200 'You see, our work isn't our work until it's shared, 953 01:06:35,200 --> 01:06:36,880 'somebody else has to see it.' 954 01:06:39,440 --> 01:06:41,200 She did have a very private life, 955 01:06:41,200 --> 01:06:43,360 so I think she would not be very happy about that, 956 01:06:43,360 --> 01:06:45,920 about people knowing about her. 957 01:06:47,520 --> 01:06:52,320 As her story dissipates, and our stories dissipate as they should, 958 01:06:52,320 --> 01:06:57,200 and the work remains, that's, I think she would be thrilled with it. 959 01:06:57,200 --> 01:07:00,320 In 200 years, if people are looking at her work, 960 01:07:00,320 --> 01:07:03,560 I'd be absolutely delighted and I think she would be also. 961 01:07:05,440 --> 01:07:08,600 You know, at some point, I think I'm going to give some away, 962 01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:12,200 maybe one a week for a bunch of weeks and see what happens. 963 01:07:12,200 --> 01:07:14,880 Give them back to the streets, so to speak. 964 01:07:14,880 --> 01:07:17,520 Look at all this, this is only one third of what I have. 965 01:07:17,520 --> 01:07:19,080 There's three times this, 966 01:07:19,080 --> 01:07:20,760 so there's more than enough. 967 01:07:22,560 --> 01:07:24,640 There's people grabbing cameras right now, 968 01:07:24,640 --> 01:07:28,800 they're doing a lot of street photography because of Vivian. 969 01:07:28,800 --> 01:07:30,800 I can't give away the rabbits, 970 01:07:30,800 --> 01:07:32,440 that's my favourite. 971 01:07:44,560 --> 01:07:48,560 It must have been around 2007 or so, I was on my way to work 972 01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:51,560 and I saw her walking down the street, 973 01:07:51,560 --> 01:07:53,440 and I had a moment where I thought, 974 01:07:53,440 --> 01:07:56,960 "Oh, should I...come over, 975 01:07:56,960 --> 01:07:58,520 "walk over and say hello?" 976 01:07:58,520 --> 01:08:01,480 And I just didn't, I was running a little late and I just thought... 977 01:08:01,480 --> 01:08:04,720 So I stood there and I just kind of watched her walk, 978 01:08:04,720 --> 01:08:07,040 and I thought, "Wow! 979 01:08:07,040 --> 01:08:10,920 "Vivian's still going strong, that is strange." 980 01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:20,800 Right at the end of her life, 981 01:08:20,800 --> 01:08:24,200 a neighbour caught sight of her round the rubbish bins. 982 01:08:24,200 --> 01:08:26,960 I first saw her in the neighbourhood 983 01:08:26,960 --> 01:08:28,600 in the alleys. 984 01:08:28,600 --> 01:08:32,560 She used to be carrying shopping bags, books. 985 01:08:32,560 --> 01:08:34,480 I thought she was homeless. 986 01:08:37,880 --> 01:08:40,600 When I swim, I started noticing her over here. 987 01:08:40,600 --> 01:08:44,480 She used to sit over here behind these trees, 988 01:08:44,480 --> 01:08:48,920 kind of a...I don't know, out of the way, she didn't really want, 989 01:08:48,920 --> 01:08:52,720 she didn't want to be bothered, I think she knew she was different. 990 01:08:53,960 --> 01:08:55,920 She'd just be staring at the lake. 991 01:08:58,480 --> 01:09:00,480 I'd swim for a half hour out there and 992 01:09:00,480 --> 01:09:03,640 I'd look up and she would be gone.