Vivian Mayer, self-portrait, age 50-60

The name of the American Vivian Mayer is little known to a wide audience. She was fond of photography as a governess, but she did not publish her work. Meyer is today considered one of the leading representatives of the art of street photography.

The mirror has two sides

Mayer’s legacy is an emotional collection of people on the city’s streets: tired housewives and biblical socialites, crying children and sullen old men, stylish businessmen and distant beggars. Mayer loved to take self-portraits. Among his works are many photographs in the mirror. But his self-portrait is only part of the plot. There is no narcissism in these shots, but there are impressive details: whether it is parts of the interior, the view of a city street, or an unusual wall texture.

Vivian Mayer, self-portrait, 1955

Little is known about Vivian’s life: fame came to her after death, and finding her relatives was a difficult task.

It’s written in Vivian Mayer’s official biography on her website.

He was born in the Bronx, New York in 1926, the son of Austrian Charles Mayer and French woman Marie Josso. Her parents divorced when Vivian was one year old. His brother Carl suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and later became addicted to illegal drugs and alcohol.

Vivian Mayer, self-portrait, 1955

After her parents divorced, Vivian moved to France with her mother and family friend Jeanne Bertrand, a professional photographer. Bertrand was self-taught. But at the turn of the century, newspapers named him one of Connecticut’s most talented photographers, and that was just four years after he took his first photograph. After Jeanne, Vivian also started taking portraits and landscapes, gaining skills from her mentor.

“Mary Poppins with the Camera”

During his youth, Mayer actually lived in two countries—either he came to America, where he started making money on his own (for example, as a teenager, he sold sweets in a candy store), then came back. to France. At the age of 25, he decided to stay in New York.

Vivian taught herself English by participating in theater performances, but retained her French accent for the rest of her life.

Vivian started shooting with an inexpensive Kodak Brownie, and in the 50s she switched to an expensive professional Rolleiflex camera with two lenses – this already allowed to capture small details in the photo.

Works, Vivian Maier, New York, year unknown

Canada, year unknown

Mayer did not advertise her hobby and preferred to earn a living in a much more “earthly” profession – she got a job as a nanny. She continued to take care of children for the rest of her life for nearly 40 years. Mayer worked for well-known wealthy families. For example, the then famous TV presenter Phil Donahue.

Former employers later recalled that the children were interested in him: he found real adventures simply by walking around the city – he noticed the unusualness in everyday reality and took pictures of everything. The image of a governess-photographer was so unusual for others that Vivian earned the nickname “Mary Poppins with a camera.”

Florida, 1957

life in boxes

Many of Mayer’s films were left undeveloped, boxed and stored. Some researchers of his personality believe that he suffers from syllogomania – pathological hoarding. He warned his employers in advance that he would be carried away with his “life in boxes.”

Vivian had no children of her own and never married. She saw her students as her relatives. But she never talked about her private life.

New York, 1954

Florida, 1960

Eyewitnesses who knew Vivian describe her as similar: a woman of strong character, high intelligence and her own point of view. Eccentric, though not letting anyone get too close. A staunch socialist and feminist advocating for women’s right to be creative and realize their talents.

Mayer loved long dresses and woolen coats, wore hats, and preferred men’s shoes to heels.

Travel and poverty

Despite modest financial means, Vivian traveled a lot. In the 1950s and 1960s she toured Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and visited Canada, South America and the Caribbean. According to biographers, she was able to afford these trips, apparently thanks to the sale of a certain farm in France that belonged to her family.

Vivian traveled alone, being taken by representatives of the poor on the streets of cities she did not know – helping them tell their stories to the world. She even took her first steps in documentaries, talked to beggars on the streets, and recorded the conversations on video or audio.

In the 80s, Meyer had nothing to pay for the apartment, he almost went out into the street – adult ex-students helped. Seeing Meyer almost as a second mother, the three paid for her housing and later provided financial assistance.

In those years, Vivian began to take color photographs using several different cameras – Kodak Ektachrome, Leica IIIc. The negatives piled up: There were so many boxes that she had to rent a separate warehouse for them.

Chicago, 1975

Chicago, 1979

There are different interpretations as to why Mayer did not publish images and cooperate with galleries. Some researchers believe he underestimated his work, while others tried to contact publishers and gallery owners to no avail.

In 2008, Vivian began to have serious health problems: she slipped on the ice and hit her head, never recovering from this injury. With no one to look after him, Meyer was placed in a nursing home. She died in April 2009 at the age of 83.

Vivian thought about life and death in one of the audio recordings (sometimes she recorded such audio “notes”).

1978

1980

400 dollar treasure

Vivian Meyer’s work was recognized by chance. The owner of the safe, in which there were boxes with numerous negatives, put them up for auction when the payment was not made once again. As a result, the main part of the archive was purchased in 2007 by John Maloof, a former real estate agent from Chicago, for $400.

John Maloof

Maloof said he later obtained more than 100,000 photos by an unknown photographer. These were about three thousand photographic prints, along with partially undeveloped negatives. Maloof tried to find at least some information about the author on the Internet, but the search did not leave any information about Vivian Mayer’s name.

John Maloof says, having studied the pictures himself, he realized that he had accidentally discovered a new talent in the world. Hundreds of users of the Flickr platform wrote to him the same thing with which he shared photos.

The first exhibition of Mayer’s work took place two years after his death, thanks to Maloof. John had to turn to genealogists to find relatives of the deceased and purchase the copyright. So he found a cousin Mayer in France. Maloof has held exhibitions of Mayer’s photographs in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and then other countries. He published several photo albums and then sold part of the archive to collector Jeffrey Goldstein.

A few years later, another person began calling Vivian’s relatives, a lawyer and photographer David Deal, who in the past suspected John Maloof had the right to monetize Mayer’s work. Deal sued to protect the rights of the photographer’s possible heirs and tracked down another cousin, Vivian, who never knew him. The result was a copyright lawsuit. Vivian’s photos are now in the public domain.

In 2013, Maloof made a documentary called “Searching for Vivian Maier” with the subtitle “The Discovery That Shook the Art World”. The tape was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA in the Best Documentary nomination, and it was then that many viewers were the first to discover Vivian’s work.

excellent composition master

Vivian Meyer’s creative researchers note the “sense of empathy” her photographs convey: She apparently empathizes with any of her characters.

His style is also appreciated for Mayer’s – consciously or unconsciously – moving away from “photographic clichés”: he was not interested in the sights and attractions of cities. On the streets, he found precisely the details that other photographers did not notice. His pictures are not bright postcards, but sketches of real life.

Chicago, 1960

Chicago, 1970

British documentary photographer Anna Fox says.

According to Anna, the fact that Mayer’s photographs were never professionally recognized during the creator’s lifetime may also be due to gender inequality:

A separate challenge for the curators of Vivian Mayer’s legacy was the selection of negatives for print: they had to choose the ones they liked from hundreds of thousands. To do this, they studied handwritten instructions that Mayer had once left in the archives, which he had left for his lab workers, and which he sometimes showed pictures of. And he knew exactly what result was needed: which negatives needed to be developed, how to cut, what paper type and texture to choose, etc. stated she.

Puerto Rico, 1965

But did Vivian Mayer want so many people to see her photos – even biographers still can’t answer that question unequivocally?