Vivian Maier(English) Vivian Maier, 1926 - 2009) - American photographer. She was engaged in photography all her adult life, took more than 150,000 photographs, but never showed them publicly and kept her hobby secret from her friends. She gained fame after her death in 2009.
Biography
Vivian Maier born in New York (USA) on February 1, 1926. Even before 1930, her father left the family (possibly temporarily) for unknown reasons. In the 1930 census he is listed under the name Jean Bertrand. It is also known that he was a photographer and may have known Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (founder of the American art Whitney). Vivian's mother - Marie Jasso- was French and in 1935 she took Vivian to her homeland, to the commune of Saint-Julien-en-Chansor. However, even before 1940 they returned back to New York.
Even though Vivian Maier was born in the USA, English was not her native language and she learned it when she returned from France. John Maloof (eng. John Maloof, researcher of the life and work of Vivian Maier, director of the documentary film “Finding Vivian Maier”) claimed that she studied English by visiting theaters in New York. It is also known that for some time she lived with her friend Jeanne Bertrand, who was a professional photographer and probably had a certain influence on her.
Until 1951, Mayer moved frequently between the United States and France, and only at the age of 25 did she finally move to New York. A little later, in 1956, she went to Chicago and began working there as a nanny.
For the next 40 years, Vivian Maier lived with various families and worked as a nanny (including in the family of the famous American producer Phil Donahue). She was described as a withdrawn, eccentric woman who got along better with children than with adults and was prone to pathological hoarding. It is also believed that she was a socialist and feminist in her beliefs. However, because Vivian Maier never sought fame, did not show her work to anyone, was apparently a very secretive person and, of course, did not give any interviews, etc. Almost all information about what kind of person she was received from family members with whom she lived and who perceived her primarily as a nanny, without knowing either about her secret hobby or the details of her biography.
In 1959-1960 she has undertaken a number of trips to Egypt, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, France, Italy and Indonesia. Presumably this kind of travel was connected with the sale of a farm in France.
Working as a nanny, Vivian Maier raised three children in the Ginsburg family. She developed the warmest relationship with this family, which continued after all the children grew up. When she was already an elderly woman, the Ginsburgs bought her a small apartment (presumably, at the time of the purchase, Vivian Maier was homeless and living on social security). She spent the last year of her life in a nursing home after she slipped and fell and suffered a head injury in the winter of 2008. Vivian Maier died on April 21, 2009 at the age of 83.
After death
Shortly after Vivian Maier's death, her photographs were sold at auction for $380 to a certain John Malouf, who worked in a real estate agency, was never particularly interested in photography and just wanted to buy a few photographs of the town of Portage Park, which he wrote about. At that time I was writing an article as a freelancer.
However, while studying his new acquisition, Malouf decided to find out who the author of the photographs was and soon began his investigation, revealing to the world a new photographer - Vivian Maier.
Despite the fact that Mayer herself never advertised her hobby and no evidence was found that she showed her work to anyone, her archive contains more than 100,000 negatives. In addition, she appears to have taken great care of her photographs and kept them in as good condition as possible throughout her life. The artist’s work has still not been fully studied, and what is known to the general public has become so thanks to John Maloof, who is still sorting through the archive he inherited, and to collector Jeff Goldstein, who bought some of the photographs and thereby also drew attention to Mayer’s work.
Creation
The work of Vivian Maier is referred to as the so-called. street photography (although among her works you can find the most various works). The photographs currently published were mostly taken between the late 1950s and early 1970s. However, this is partly due to the sheer volume of images in general. In the future, John Maloof plans to release a more complete publication of Mayer's work and continue to dissect her archive.
It is believed that Vivian Maier has been a photographer for almost her entire life. In addition, she managed to travel around quite a lot of countries and took photographs everywhere. It is surprising that she always financed both her photographic equipment and her travels herself, without receiving any grants, and often hiding it from her friends.
Although the bulk of Vivian Maier's archive consists of photographs, she was also involved in videography (mostly filming her children in her care) and recorded interviews with most likely random passers-by and her own monologues.
It was only at the end of 2007 that Vivian Maier’s work was discovered by local Chicago historian and collector John Maloof. After this, her work began to rapidly spread throughout the network. Numerous awards and exhibitions around the world followed, but unfortunately, Vivian Maier passed away on April 21, 2009.
© Vivian Maier
After returning from France, Mayer worked in a sweatshop. At the age of 25, she took a job as a nanny for a family of 14 and often roamed the streets of Chicago, taking portraits of people with her treasured Rolleiflex camera. John Malouf discovered Mayer's work quite by accident through an auction. With his highly artistic eye, he saw brilliant photographs from a completely different era.
© Vivian Maier
What makes Vivian Maier's work different?
When you think about it, what's most fascinating about these photographs is the choice of subjects to portrait photography and masterfully played with light.
Expressing your art in street photography is perhaps the only way for everyone to be able to admire your work. And there is a feeling that Mayer’s photographs of this genre are easily understandable to an admiring viewer.
Like many modern street photographers, Mayer not only filled the frame, but also paid attention to the quality of light and emphasized the dignity of the person depicted.
The photographer's courage is palpable as she pushes her beyond her comfort zone to meet strangers on the street. Building relationships within photography is also one of the facets of her work.
The most important portraits are those that stand out in a photographer's portfolio. Mayer's work is bold and brilliant. Her street portraits retain the essence and distinctive charm.
The photographer's work style is inspiring. She talked to the subjects to capture them. Not everyone these days thinks about this detail. This is a form of humble appreciation and a sense of comfort that could be given to the subject.
The composition in these photographs is simple and elegant. Vivian Maier's work is a master class in positioning objects in the frame.
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
© Vivian Maier
Finding Vivian Maier - Official Video
A documentary about how the woman and the masters of photography were searched for. People involved in the story appear throughout the film.
Vivian Maier - street photographer and nanny
A wonderful narration on the popular television talk show Tonight Show in Chicago about the beauty of Mayer's photographs and the life story of the photographer.
Search for Vivian Maier
Continuation of the same plot. There is even more focus on Mayer's work and even more detailed information about her life. A beautiful documentary project telling about this photographer.
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You are unlikely to find information about this woman. She's not a famous photographer. During her lifetime, not a single one of her works was even published.
In 2009, real estate agent John Maloof bought several boxes from a storage warehouse that belonged to an unknown person. In these boxes he found about 100,000 negatives and undeveloped films. As he began to scan them, his breath caught in his throat.
The negatives began to turn into great photographs that were taken in the 60s and 70s. These photographs belonged to Vivian Maier. The very next day, John received more than 200 offers to make a film about her and her life.
On the day of remembrance of Vivian Maier website I decided to remember the story of this amazing woman.
Vivian took photographs all her life, but never showed her work to anyone. Snapping 200 films a year, she developed them in her own room, turning it into a darkroom.
She never made money from her hobby; moreover, her circle of acquaintances never knew about this passion for photography. And only after death, by chance, these images became part of history.
She lived most of her life in Chicago and worked as a governess for wealthy families. IN free time Vivian wandered the streets of her city with a camera. The photographs taken convey the culture very well American life the middle of the last century.
She wore men's trousers, men's shoes and almost always a wide-brimmed hat. Remembering what she was like, her former students described their nanny this way: “She was a socialist, a feminist, a film critic, and one of that breed of people who always tell the truth to your face, no matter what it was.”
Introduction
In 2009, the world learned about a new genius of photography - Vivian Maier, who, unfortunately, did not live to see this fame. The discovery shocked the art world: “New Cartier-Bresson!”, “Original female gaze!”, “Unique!”, “Mysterious!” - screamed the newspaper headlines. She was put on a par with classic photographers Diane Arbus, Helen Levitt, Harry Callaham, Lisette Model. “Vivian Maier is a master”, “She is a genius of street photography”, “How could we not know about her?!” - exclaimed art historians and art critics. Exhibitions of her photographs were held all over the world: “In Search of Vivian Maier”, “Vivian Maier - Life Discovered”, “Vivian Maier: A Female Lens”, “The Mystery of Vivian Maier” and others. “But who discovered this brilliant photographer to the world?” - many wondered.
Behind this noisy and stunning discovery was a “modest and shy” young man of about 26, John Malouf, a native of Chicago. He accidentally bought a box of negatives from a “crazy old lady” who had recently died in a nursing home at an auction sale. His path of discovery of Vivian Maier, the “offering” of this genius to the world, including the arrogant and self-contained world of art ( Becker, 1982), was “difficult” and “thorny”. In 2013, Maloof, co-authored with Charles Siskel, released the film Finding Vivian Maier ( Finding Vivian Maier), telling about his “difficult” struggle. Despite Malouf's debut as a co-director, the film, like exhibitions of Vivian Maier's photographs, was noisy and enthusiastic at many international festivals, and then released into theaters.
Without Maloof's accidental purchase, Vivian Maier would have remained unknown and unappreciated. Like so many other artists we will never know about and most of whom are women. But behind this rosy missionary success story lies another narrative.
In my opinion, the “discovery of Vivian Maier”, reproduced and documented in the film, represents a process of capitalist capture, objectification, appropriation and fetishization of the results of other people's creative labor. Almost the entire archive of Vivian Maier, including her photographs, negatives, films, audio recordings, letters, a collection of publications and recordings, personal belongings and other items, ended up in the hands of one person - John Maloof, who “secured” his legal and moral right on the dominant discourse about Mayer's life and work. But not only. He completely subordinated to his power her identity, artistic practice (activity) and the right to interpret her creative path. I want to try to analyze and describe this process, taking the position of a Marxist art critic.
For me, the figure of Vivian Maier, the facts of her biography and artistic strategy are very close and understandable. As a video artist involved in a similar practice of street film/video documentation; (e)migrants who moved to the USA in the mid-90s and then returned to Russia; a woman who highly values personal autonomy and independence; researcher who shares the positions of feminist and gender theory. Regarding everything that I will write about Vivian Maier, I need to add the adverbs “possibly”, “probably”, “apparently”. I have neither evidence nor the opportunity to be convinced that I am right. My analysis is a speculative analysis, but it is based on what has already been said, shown and written. I will just try to look at the facts and available information differently, otherwise I will “cut the horse” (Tsvetkov, 2014).
Biographical legend Vivian Maier and her “cut”
Restore the complete biography of Vivian Maier at this moment not possible, too little information has been published. The artifacts of her life, concentrated in the hands of John Malouf, are subject to strict selection, interpretation by their owner and are published only selectively. Following Lukács, who distinguished between “facts” and facts in the knowledge of reality (Lukács, 2003), we have at our disposal the “facts” of Vivian Maier’s life. Perhaps some of them are valid, such as the day of her birth and the day of her death, or that she worked as a nanny for wealthy families and was a first-class photographer. Containing information about a person provides the suppressor with the opportunity to create myths/legends about him/her, and, consequently, the opportunity to manipulate history itself.
The following is reliably known about Vivian Maier: born on February 1, 1926 in New York, in the Bronx, father - Austrian, mother - French (Marie Maier); died April 20, 2009 in Chicago, in a nursing home. All other information is fragmentary and represents the result of an investigation conducted and presented by Mayer’s self-proclaimed “official” biographer, John Maloof. Many sites reproduce the same version of this biography: she spent most of her childhood in France (her mother’s relatives had a farm in the village); her parents divorced when she was 4 years old; his mother, Marie Mayer, lived with her friend Jeanne Bertrand, a professional photographer, after her divorce. She may have been the one who taught Vivian how to use a camera. Where and how the family lived before 1951 is absolutely unknown. Based on migration documents, it was possible to establish that in 1939 Marie returned with Vivian from France to New York, and in 1951 Vivian, at the age of 25, again came from France to New York, but this time alone.
It should be noted that none historical reference about Vivian Maier does not contain any mention of her education, as well as suggestions about how her life developed in pre-war Europe, about her possible participation in the Second World War, or that her fate could somehow be connected with this tragedy, and about other facts that had an impact on its formation. The “biographer” did not even mention the war or the situation in post-war Europe, although Malouf’s film is replete with “evidence” of her masculinity, “passion” for men's clothing and shoes, almost military bearing, etc., which supposedly were characteristic of her.
After moving to New York, Vivian Maier gets a job as a nanny for a wealthy American family and begins to actively take photographs. In 1956, she moved to Chicago, where she continued to work as a “live-in nanny” for wealthy families from the northern areas of Chicagoland, mainly in Highland Park. At the same time, “in her free time as a hobby,” she takes photographs. For 40 years. “The nanny who always had a camera” is how she is remembered by the rich children who grew up and are interviewed by Malouf in the film.
In the 90s, her fate was difficult; she was on the verge of complete poverty. The Genzburg family, where she raised two boys, helps her with housing and supports her financially. Apparently, it was at this time that Mayer rented two containers in the storage facility, where she transported her entire voluminous archive. In 2007, she suffered a serious head injury, after which she had to move to a nursing home. That same year, due to an outstanding rent payment, the storage facility transfers the archive auction house, which puts the contents of containers up for sale, dividing it into separate lots. At one auction, Maloof buys a box of negatives for $380. April 20, 2009 Vivian Maier dies. In October 2009, Malouf's career began as her interpreter and owner of 90% of the archive.
The official biography of Vivian Maier paints a portrait of an uneducated, poor, albeit independent, self-taught, lower-class woman with a knack for good photography. By official version, she was not ambitious enough to become a professional photographer, she lacked knowledge and determination. Instead, she "dedicated" her life to caring for others as a nanny. “Nanny was her natural calling, she knew how to give love and care; street photography was her hobby.”
This picture, which Malouf is desperately trying to defend, leaves conflicting feelings. According to his own data, the Maier archive consists of "from 100,000 to 150,000 negatives, more than 3,000 vintage photographs, hundreds of film clips, home movies, audio recordings of interviews, original Vivian Maier cameras, documents and various other objects." How could a “simple nanny” take 150 thousand negatives and print 3000 photographs? How could she be fluent in complex photographic equipment? Why did she so scrupulously collect and store her archive, clearly thematic and catalogued? Are these artifacts of her practice proof that the nanny was not Mayer's “core identity,” but something else entirely?
It is important for a street photographer to feel comfortable in public spaces. Especially if this photographer is a woman. A photographer must have a number of qualities, including high speed in choosing a subject or moment, professional knowledge of technology, fearlessness and inconspicuousness. Mayer possessed all these qualities perfectly. Her photographs, her classified and clearly organized collection of newspaper clippings and other artifacts, and the testimony of her former employers are evidence that Mayer was actively interested in the reality around her, society and its social structure, and was well aware of her place in this system. She was a Marxist dynamic person and her trained, active gaze ( gaze) quickly “pulled out” the plot from the surrounding reality, and the hand precisely built the composition and at the right moment pressed the “trigger”. At the same time, Mayer's dynamism was manifested in her need “to express her abilities in the world around her, and not in her need to use the world as a means of satisfying her physical needs” (Fromm, 1993:348).
The cameras Mayer used required professional knowledge exposure metering and optics. Determining exposure and shutter speed, adjusting focus and light - everything was done manually and very quickly. Judging by the photographs that were taken perfectly from a technical point of view, these skills were brought to automaticity by the photographer. She knew exactly the “behavior” of different films - what kind of image they could give her, the level of contrast and grain, the possibilities of light transmission and tonality. Mayer was very knowledgeable about the developing process and developed her films herself whenever she had the opportunity. She gave clear instructions for laboratory printing from her negatives. When she had the opportunity, most often financial.
Many art critics noted that Vivian Maier managed to get close to the subjects of her shooting and film them almost closely. Moreover, the heroes of most of her photographs are by no means peaceful bourgeois, but representatives of the social bottom of capitalist society. As mentioned above, the secret of her “fearlessness” was that she was almost always accompanied by her young pupils. And they were a “guarantee” of her safety and provided symbolic protection from possible insult or aggression. In the American child-centric society of the 1950s-60s ( Hays, 1996) no one would risk attacking or insulting a respectable lady with children. Vivian Maier has brought the qualities of a street photographer to professional perfection, but another feature of her practice makes Maier a conscientious and self-aware photographer: her astronomical productivity. She shot on average one video per day, i.e. from 13 to 36 photographs (depending on the format). She “rarely shot more than one frame of the same subject,” meaning Mayer’s negatives represent single frames of unique events—hundreds of thousands of unique photographs. She also made films and interviewed people in supermarkets, on the streets, and in museums. The accuracy of maintaining his archive, and he moved with her to the employers’ families until he got into the storage facility, also proves it serious attitude to his creativity, going beyond the boundaries of “hobby” or “fun”.
Now it is impossible to say that Vivian Maier was not looking for an opportunity to exhibit, did not want to be seen and appreciated. There is an episode in Malouf's film where he quotes an excerpt from her letter to the owner of a photo studio in a small village in France. In it, she offers cooperation - to print her photographs on postcards. The photographer describes in detail what paper should be printed on and how, and also expresses high praise for his own works. But cooperation did not work out.
Perhaps there were other proposals and attempts on Mayer’s part to gain attention from the professional community, including the American one. We don't know about this. But it is safe to say that there are structural barriers and limitations that Vivian Maier appears to have faced as a woman, as a low-status worker, and as an artist-photographer.
Part 2. American society of Mayer’s time and his “cut”
American society in the mid-20th century was strictly segregated by gender and women's participation in the public sphere was limited. American sociologist Talcott Parsons in 1955 published the article “The American Family: Its Relationship with Personality and social structure", where he described men's and female roles, prevailing in American society by that time. In his sex-role approach, “role” was defined as a regulated set of expectations assigned by patriarchal tradition to a man and a woman in a heterosexual family. In his opinion, “the role adult woman still consists primarily of fulfilling her family functions as wife, mother and housewife, while the role of an adult man is primarily carried out in the professional world, at work, and in providing his family with a certain status and income" ( Parsons, 1955:14-15).
Thus, a woman was expected to fulfill an “expressive” role in the family system (and later this expectation was moved beyond family relations and is attributed as a “natural” role to women in society as a whole), and to men as an “instrumental” one. Consequently, the private space of the house was assigned to the woman, and the public space to the man. This order almost completely excluded women from the public—professional—sphere and minimized their influence on public institutions, locking them at home in the bosom of the family. In the capitalist world, where professional status is decisive in the social status of an individual, a man became the only legitimate actor and “master of destinies” in society.
In addition, the attitude towards a female nanny engaged in “emotional work” has always been and remains dismissive. In modern social theory emotional work is brought out of the gray field of silence and ceases to be “invisible”. It is defined as work - the daily provision of care by some family members in relation to other family members. According to Arlie Hochschild, care is “mutual emotional dependence(connection) between the caregiver and the care recipient, where the caregiver feels responsible for the well-being of those for whom he/she cares and carries out intellectual, mental and physical work" ( Hochschild, 1983 cited. By Rotkirch, Tkach and Zdravomyslova, 2012:131). But emotional labor was and is still considered predominantly “female” labor, and therefore low-status and low-skilled. Gender stereotypes are being eradicated very slowly.
But even if a woman managed to realize herself professionally, she faced numerous barriers within her profession. American world art of the 1950s and 60s was a reflection of American society with its gender stereotypes and roles. Artists had to constantly prove their worth and defend their right to engage in art. IN Western history In the arts, it was traditionally believed that the only legitimate artist-creator was always a man, and a woman was perceived as his model or muse.
As Griselda Pollock wrote: “Women have always created works of art, but the cultural treatment of this fact has varied depending on the emerging definitions of the artist (increasingly becoming a pragmatic social ideal) and understandings of femininity (a decisive factor in social organization)” (Pollock, 2005:218 ). She also noted that before late XVIII century, this division was not so acute, and antagonism appeared when “with the consolidation of bourgeois society, a new and contradictory configuration of the artist (Man, a lonely antisocial individual and creator) and Woman (the guardian mother of the hearth and society) was created. This cultural division has ensured that the hundreds of women who actually create art for a living will never be recognized as great artists or have much of a livelihood. It also operated ideologically, reinforcing the absolute gender hierarchy based on the family that characterizes bourgeois society, that is, our society” (Pollock, 2005:218-219).
It should be noted that in the early 1950s and mid-1960s, the second wave feminist movement was just emerging in America. Linda Nochlin’s famous article “Why Were There No Great Women Artists?” has not yet been published, revealing the institutional and structural reasons for the absence of women in the art scene, pointing to discriminatory practices and stereotypes that discriminate against female artists (Nochlin, 2005). The feminist 1970s had not yet exploded the art world and questioned male art hegemony. Therefore, the chances of breaking through the barriers of the closed and arrogant American art community for an immigrant woman (and Mayer spoke with an accent), unknown to anyone and engaged in low-status work, were almost zero.
But perhaps Vivian Maier did not want this breakthrough. Perhaps her project was much more radical than it seems at first glance. A hypothetical interpretation of her life strategy could be as follows: despite her constant and massive cultural production of “external objects, things which, due to their properties, satisfy some human needs” (Marx, 1950:41) - highly professional photographs highest quality, she deliberately did not “bring” them to the market of cultural consumption. Non-participation, non-involvement in cultural capitalist trade turnover was her lifetime individual project resistance, its transcendence (Sartre, 1994). But the tragedy of her story lies in the fact that despite her personal success during her life, after her death she was still “intercepted”, “appropriated” and reified by the capitalist system through its most representative actor - a buyer of “junk”, a businessman and a former real estate agent John Maloof.
In order to carry out and legitimize his capture, Malouf mystifies, banalizes and de-professionalizes Vivian Maier, making her a “nanny with a camera”, denying her conscious creative process and practice. In a capitalist society, it is much easier to appropriate to oneself labor and the right to interpretation that does not know its worth and is not appreciated, but talented woman, how creative heritage an educated, confident and professionally successful artist with a radical strategy. Maloof must not only confiscate the results of creative work and appropriate all the profits from their sales, but also resignify Maier’s activities, subjugate identity and appropriate her body, turn Vivian Maier into a sign (Baudrillard, 2000).
Part 3. The biographical legend of John Malouf and its “cut”
John Malouf views and interprets Vivian Maier from the position of the dominant hierarchical and hierarchizing class of capital, from the position of the “victor” (Benyamin, 2012). He is a true child of the capitalist system. Like Vivian Maier, little is known about John Maloof. More precisely, he doesn’t say much about himself. Where did he study (and did he study at all), what were his merits, interests, views. The only thing that is known before he "accidentally" bought a box of Vivian Maier negatives is that he was a real estate agent and a regular participant (since childhood) in auctions. Malouf is a “third-generation buyer” (Reaves, 2011), a businessman who made his capital by reselling real estate or other people's belongings. He is a typical capitalist, “a class that buys without selling, that is, consumes without producing” (Marx, 1950:112).
The auction becomes a metaphor for Maloof's life. First, these are real auctions and sales, where, like in lotto, all sorts of rubbish is bought in the hope of earning something from it. Then - the speculative real estate market. And finally, a high-status art market. But the mechanism is the same everywhere: it buys and resells goods produced by others and ending up on the market for various reasons.
Restore real facts It’s difficult to know how in 5 years he ended up in the position of “owner and chief curator of Malouf Collection, Ltd,” i.e., copyright holder and manager of the archive of Mayer’s works. There are too many contradictions and dark places, and Malouf is not going to resolve or clarify them. Instead, he continues to reproduce his own legend and his constructed legend of Vivian Maier in interviews, in the film, and in official publications. The legend of a simple boy who accidentally found the archive of his deceased nanny, who turned out to be a genius of street photography in the mid-twentieth century.
But behind this legend there is still evidence of his awareness of the value of Mayer’s works, repurchasing for next to nothing from other owners of the negatives, selling part of them to the collector Jeffrey Goldstein and a secret agreement with him, paid as a payoff to the only heir at that time (the amount of the transaction was not disclosed). Taking advantage of gaps and unclear concepts in American copyright law, he appropriated this right to himself. The result of his growing activity was the seizure of 100% of the surplus value of Vivian Maier's creative work.
The dead photographer became a “gold mine” for Malouf, providing him with a constant income and high income for the rest of his life. social status. The Vivian Maier™ project became his “glass escalator”, taking him to the top of the hierarchy of capitalist society. Thanks to work dead woman, he earned himself all possible capital (Bourdieu, 2002): economic - high income from sales of photographs, interest on exhibition activities, book publications, film distribution, etc.; social - his status is now defined as the owner of the Malouf Collection and the entire legacy of Vivian Maier, he is involved in charity and education; cultural - he now positions himself not as a small real estate agent, but as a photographer, director and artist; and symbolic - in addition to the totality of all other capitals, he talks about his service to the “Mayer cause”, that this is his mission. But this is not enough to legitimize oneself. Maier's radical project must be discredited: the ideological apparatus of cultural production to which Malouf now belongs does not tolerate alternatives and demands the submission of all its actors, living or dead.
To appropriate Mayer's identity and body, to completely subjugate her to himself, Malouf turns to documentary cinema. His film “In Search of Vivian Maier” reconstructs the path of his capture, while simultaneously creating “facts”, “interpretations”, “assumptions” that construct a portrait of the Other. But not the “Other” according to Sartre or Lacan, but the “Other” according to Beauvoir. The Female Other, who does not have her own project, her own transcendence, frozen in her own immanence (Beauvoir, 1997). Beauvoir wrote that “the peculiarity of a woman’s situation is that, possessing, like any person, autonomous freedom, she recognizes and chooses herself in a world where men force her to accept herself as an Other: they want to define her as an object and condemn her to it.” most on immanence, inertia, since its transcendence will be constantly carried out by another consciousness, essential and sovereign. The drama of woman is in the conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as essential, and the demands of the situation, which defines it as inessential” (Beauvoir, 1997:39).
Malouf “launches” in the documentary a mechanism for re-signifying Mayer’s experience - through the banalization of her individuality, the denial of the essence of her practice and dignity and, in fact, through public, in this case, visual - (r)rape. He consistently creates myths about her “privacy,” which he himself shamelessly violates, explaining this as his missionary task. He collects "facts" about " dark sides" character, demonizing Vivian Maier, about her " love for children and maternal instinct”, which makes her a professional nanny, not a photographer, etc. He brings in experts to legitimize his legends, and witnesses who “knew” Mayer. But who are these experts who are ready to talk about the Artist with a radical anti-capitalist project? They are the same members of capitalist society, bourgeois, consumers, like Malouf himself - the rich middle class, gallery owners, collectors, etc. It does not occur to them to look at Vivian Maier not from the point of view of bourgeois ideology, but from a different position. Experts do not question their own position, just as the director himself does not do this. Instead, they come up with a diagnosis: Vivian Maier's nanny was mentally unstable and "she had a hard time fitting in." the world" It should be noted that the Genzburg family, who knew Mayer better than others and supported her until the end of her life, refused to participate in this film. So far they have not given a single interview or comment. Perhaps they would have disposed of the photographer's archive differently. Maloof lays out Vivian’s personal belongings in front of the viewer, evidence of her private life, which she so reverently and carefully protected when she was alive. He exposes her physically absent but symbolically present body, thereby carrying out the first act of violence against dead woman. “She didn’t want to show herself, so I’ll show her. I'll break all the locks and show it off publicly underwear, things, shoes - so you can see how great my power is over her” - this is the logic behind these shots.
He goes further and creates a myth about the "possible" sexual assault that was committed on Mayer. Although the word “rape” was never uttered in the film - the responsibility is too great. "That's why she was afraid of men," Malouf tells us, explaining her appearance, implicit sexuality and "weird" interests. But this interpretation of Mayer’s actions and views seems to me to be another symbolic violence: the very suspicion that she could have been raped puts a sign of damage on her, a “light cut” that triggers the power mechanism of total suppression and subordination.
Virginie Despantes wrote that “rape is a clear political program: the basis of capitalism, a symbol of direct and shameless abuse of power. The strongest sets the rules of the game in order to use his power without any restrictions. Steal, take, extort, unconditionally impose your will, revel in your cruelty, depriving the enemy of even the opportunity to resist. Nullifying the enemy, depriving him of his word, will, integrity, brings the strongest to orgasm. Rape is Civil War, where one gender has the political right to dispose of the other, to make women feel inferior, guilty, degraded” (Depant, 2013: 17). It is not necessary to commit a violent act against a woman in order to subjugate her. Just give a hint and the flywheel will start working.
Malouf questions Mayer's knowledge and professionalism by relying on a highly regulated process of cultural production. The modern world of art dictates to the artist a certain set of actions and interactions: it is not enough to do good photo, you need to publish it and release it on the consumer market, thereby securing your copyright in the photographic work. During her lifetime, Mayer did not select the negatives, did not select control photographs, did not set the edition, did not leave instructions for printing, and most importantly, did not print the photographs (with the exception of those 3000) and did not put her signature. The photographer did not do this and this is blamed on her as “a frivolous attitude towards art.”
But now everything necessary has been produced and completed. Maloof insists in the film on the importance of the photo printing process as the final step in product pricing: “She was a skilled photographer, but printing was not her path.” Now he selects photographs and sets an edition (usually a series of 15 photographs from one negative). All photographs of the artist are carefully printed, stamped and signed by John Maloof, the owner of her name. Now “Vivian Maier” is equal to “John Maloof”: his signature will always appear next to her name, certifying the authenticity - not only of the photograph, but also the identity of the photographer himself, turned into a sign.
Conclusion
In the modern ideology of cultural capitalist production, the artist must be embedded in a dense grid social relations dictating certain requirements to him or her - the need to create cultural sites, organize your creativity, exhibit, print, sell, support and develop social media etc. and do this constantly. Moreover, an artist cannot be independent from the world of art. He must be “assigned” to it, like a worker to a factory, and any attempt to break this connection and dependence is severely punished. Usually oblivion or obscurity.
This would have happened with Vivian Maier, who successfully built her entire life a strategy of non-participation in the art world and determined the “value” of her works differently - not in consumption, but in creation. For her, it was the moment of filming, of taking life by surprise that was valuable and self-sufficient. Without developing negatives, without printing photographs, without stamping them with her name, without securing her ownership, and without bringing them to the market for cultural consumption, Maier implemented a radical subversion of the capitalist system.
But once the art world discovered her through John Malouf and perhaps realized Mayer's strategy, a subtle punishment ensued - de-professionalizing the artist and assigning her a low-status identity. Now she is “the nanny who took brilliant pictures.” This does not equate to the status of “an artist with a radical and alternative life strategy.” The autonomy of art is restored, genius is defined, subordinated, mummified, assigned to the owner and inscribed in history. Order has been restored. Mayer's personal protest is suppressed. Posthumously. For her. But thanks to the film, a document of this process emerged.
Baudrillard spoke about the narcissistic nature of capitalism, that it cannot resist admiring its reflection (Baudrillard, 2000). But this reflection and the very process of his enjoyment, as in Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” reveals the depravity and corruption of the capitalist system. This happened to John Maloof: admiring himself and his achievements in discovering Vivian Maier in his own film, he created a document in which he recorded step by step process alienation, objectification and fetishization of the results of another person’s work and heritage. The film revealed contradictions and “disenchanted” Malouf’s rainbow myth.
His public and widely circulated statements raised important ethical questions about the functioning of the capitalist system of cultural production, about the role of the artist in it, about his/her rights and freedoms, as well as about the status of a work of art and copyright. Benjamin wrote: “There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (Benyamin, 2012:241). Vivian Maier's legacy became a cultural document thanks to John Malouf, but the process of this formation revealed the mechanisms of enslavement and oppression of modern man.
P.S. That's the story cultural phenomenon Vivian Maier could have been finished. But capitalist society is a society of insoluble contradictions. And where one capitalist has the desire and right to profit from someone else’s labor, another actor in the capitalist system appears, a “good” capitalist, who will challenge this right and raise the question of his legitimacy. These are the rules of the game. There is now a growing dispute over who really owns the copyright to Vivian Maier's work. Malouf's hegemony is called into question. No decision has yet been reached on this issue. And perhaps Vivian Maier’s project will still be successful, although at the cost of its own probable oblivion.
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I found out about it by accident - I was watching something on YouTube documentary, and when it ended, it automatically “moved on” to the next one. The film was about this woman, a strange and mysterious photographer whom the world only recently learned about.
She had no family, children, girlfriends or close relatives. She lived long life(1926-2009), but very little evidence remains about her - only scattered memories of her many owners, and their children, whom Vivian looked after - she worked as a nanny all her life. And also her photographs - thousands, thousands of photographs! Vivian photographed almost continuously, just everything she saw: children, adults, scenes on the streets, and even trash in baskets!
Her photographs strike me as... mute. They are so vital that the absence of sound, color and movement introduces slight dissonance; this is life itself.
The world learned about Mayer thanks to a young eccentric guy, John Maloof, who bought film negatives at auction for a paltry sum, not knowing what was captured on them. Having printed the photographs, John was amazed at their expressiveness and professionalism, as well as the amazing sense of framing and composition that the unknown author possessed. John wanted to introduce humanity to his discovery.
The problem was that not a single museum recognized the artistic value of the found works, primarily because Vivian herself almost never printed her photographs, she only kept developed negatives. Museums did not want to print photographs. Then Malouf began to collaborate with one cultural center and organized the first exhibition. The success was colossal! John also became interested in Vivian herself, her life, and began looking for relatives of the photographer who could tell something about her.
It turned out that she was born into a family of Europeans - an Austrian father and a French mother. And although Vivian was born in New York, she spent her childhood and youth in Europe. Her native language was French, and she spoke English with an accent all her life. Having finally moved to America, she first lived with a photographer friend, who, apparently, taught Vivian how to photograph. It must be said that distant French relatives still keep Vivian’s mother’s camera, so she is not the first amateur photographer in the family.
Vivian used a rather expensive Rolleiflex camera. It did not have to be brought to the face; photographs were taken “from the chest”, which did not attract the attention of passers-by.
There was a rather bright period in Vivian’s life: she, apparently, received an inheritance from Europe, left her job for 8 months and went to travel. One. Vivian never had a boyfriend, or just a boyfriend, at least no one remembers such a thing. She was ugly, angular, awkward in her movements and quite tall - more than 175. In addition, Vivian was painfully withdrawn and rather suspicious, which became clinical with age.
During her travels, she visited South America, Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam and Europe. And I took a lot of photos, of course.
In all the families in which Vivian worked, she is remembered as a “very strange” woman, and by some, as a “completely sick” woman. One of her former charges claims that Vivian’s quirks went beyond the usual eccentricity. Thus, she would take the small children she looked after into the slums to photograph the lives of poor blacks and vagrants. Or, for example, take the baby with you... to the slaughterhouse.
Some of her students remember her without much warmth; she was still that kind of nanny. One woman said that as a child, Vivienne beat her and force-fed her until the girl was 8 years old and learned to dodge and resist.
Another case was recalled by another family: Vivian witnessed how a baby from this family was hit by a car (not to death, fortunately). They laid him on his stomach and covered him with a jacket until the ambulance arrived, and Vivian, instead of calming the boy, ran around and took photographs.
Vivian became completely “bad” in her declining years. She clearly showed signs of paranoia. She curtained the windows all the time, being sure that she was being watched. Vivian did not throw anything away, did not allow anyone to enter her room, collected all sorts of rubbish, her home was filled to the very ceiling with stacked newspapers. Because of these newspapers she lost last job: The owners gave some newspapers to a neighbor who was doing renovations, which caused Vivian to have an attack of uncontrollable rage. She caused a huge scandal, and that was the last straw. The employers were very sorry for the woman, but they could no longer trust her to look after the children. They fired her, but helped her purchase a small home of her own and kept in touch with her for the rest of her life.
Vivian ended her days in a nursing home, but it was only Last year her life. She for a long time She took care of herself, and ended up in a nursing home only after being injured. Her neighbors remember an elderly lady who wandered around the park, examining the contents of trash cans, swearing quietly in French and giving advice to passersby. She died at 83 years old.
Vivian clearly had no intention of making her photographs public. She took photographs for herself, she liked the process itself, she was not even interested in prints of the photographs. Perhaps her morbid fantasies required continuous recording of everything that happened around her. She sometimes said: “I am a mystery woman!”, or even sometimes said that she was a spy.
Her legacy is enormous - more than 100,000 frames of negatives. Many have not yet been published. In addition, Vivian also made video recordings. Most of her legacy was bought by John Malouf; he was forced to resell part of the archive to collector Jeff Goldstein, since he simply did not have time to process the materials in such quantities. John is still researching Vivian’s life and popularizing her legacy by organizing exhibitions. He also made a film about her.
Her photographs are amazing - as if they were taken not by a dry, withdrawn woman with oddities, but by someone else - cheerful, mischievous and loving life. Maybe she was like that, but she didn’t let anyone see it.
But you can look at her photos:
Some of the photos were taken from the site
