Vivian Meier
Vivian Maier
（1926 - 2009）
American street photographer and family nanny
Vivian Meier was born in New York in 1926, but she spent her childhood in her native France. At the age of 25, Vivian returned to the United States and moved from New York to Chicago in 1959, after which she began a four-decade-long nanny job. --- nanny career is Vivian's way of making a living, and since she was twenty-six years old, she has confirmed that she will be photographing for the rest of her life.
During her time as a nanny, Vivian would ask her employer not to allow anyone to enter her room under any circumstances, and she rarely told others her real name, often using a pseudonym or an initials. In Chicago, she spent seventeen years employed by a wealthy local family, Gensburgs, whose main job was to care for three boys. In the documentary Finding Vivian Maier (2013), children who were cared for by Vivian in different generations recall that she would incorporate photography into her work, taking them to downtown Chicago, or to the suburbs for walks, and even to the livestock ranch.
By the mid-1950s, Vivian's work had developed a very iconic personal style, with she rarely pressing the shutter continuously, but facing her subjects cautiously and carefully. Most of her most famous photographs were taken on the streets of Chicago and New York, children, rich people, black maids, fainting tramps, she passed by, saw them, photographed them, and then didn't show them to anyone.
"They have always maintained a unique calm, clear composition and gentle emotion, no sudden movements, no extreme emotions." --- The New York Times
In 1959, Vivian sold part of the land she inherited from a French farm and spent half a year traveling the world photographing.
In the mid-1970s, she began using color film. At the time, she was working at the home of American media personality Phil Donahue (who was also one of the authors of the later documentary "In Search of Vivian"), and deposited her film, dialogue recordings and collected old newspapers in his home, which, according to his recollection, was supposed to have been more than two hundred boxes.
In 2007, 81-year-old Vivian was unable to pay rent, and her negatives, photographs, recordings, and films were auctioned off, some of which were purchased by several collectors. The Gensburgs brothers, whom she had taken care of, took her to an apartment.
In January 2009, the Gensburgs brothers sent Vivian, who was already in very poor health, to a nursing home. Three months later, Vivian died.
In October of the same year, John Maloof, a collector who had collected Vivian's works, shared some of her works on Flickr, and as a result, the images received the attention of thousands of people, on this day, the beginning of Vivian's fame, but she has passed away.
(In fact, as early as July 2008, collectors shared photos of Vivian online, but the response was minimal.) ）
After Vivian's death, the Gensburgs brothers sprinkled her ashes in the woods on the North Shore, where she led them to pick strawberries many years ago.
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