intheaudience
Thank you, John Maloof, for collecting Ms. Maier's work, making it available to the public, and compiling information about her for this documentary.With regards to her work itself, I would give it a 10 out of 10. In my opinion she was a better photographer than Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, and Steve McCurry, other photographers who took portraits. Just do a Google image search with her name. Wow. The things that make her work stand out are the purity of the art, the lack of self consciousness, the art for art's sake feel that immediately takes you to the subject and the story and does not draw attention to the artist herself, the prolificacy of the body of work. It spoke immediately to my heart. I have never encountered a better photographer. The fact that she remains relatively obscure is unfair, but I have a feeling she wouldn't mind. I think she did it all for the sake of the art itself and nothing more, not money, not fame, not attention or admiration from others. This approach to the work shows itself in the result. No other way to approach the art would have generated an equivalent result.The reason I give the film 7 out of 10 stars is that I feel that the film views her from a bit of a condescending point of view because of some of the ways in which she was eccentric and self effacing, but I won't go into details lest I generate spoilers. I wish everyone who is into photography would check her out. She deserves more credit than she is getting, not that I think she would have cared, but it is the world that loses out if it doesn't pay more attention to her work.
estebangonzalez10
"The history of street photography is being rewritten."John Maloof's life changed when he bought a box full of old negatives in a local auction house. He was simply trying to find old pictures of his neighborhood for a history book, but what he got in return was more than he bargained for. He discovered these amazing street photographs taken by a woman named Vivian Maier and started posting them on his blog. Eventually the photos began getting some recognition and Maloof decided to start digging into this person's past and figuring out who she was and why she never developed all those negatives. Using the archive footage from the negatives he began piecing together certain elements of Vivian's past. Through interviews of people who knew Vivian years ago, Maloof tries to understand what motivated this mysterious woman to take these brilliant photographs. His first mission was to get her beautiful pictures artistically recognized, and once he does he begins to try to solve the enigmatic mystery of her past. The documentary works extremely well as this mysterious character study that begins to take form through Vivian's photographs and interviews with the few people that actually had interacted with her when she worked as a nanny for a number of families in New York. Finding Vivian Maier stands out from other documentaries in that it is narrated extremely well with the mystery element surrounding Vivian's life. The fact that this woman was fortunately discovered by Maloof and brought to the public's attention is quite fascinating. I'm no photography expert, but the pictures look amazing and there is no question Maier was a talented artist. Big props to John Maloof for making such an amazing discovery and doing such great investigative work.
