Finding Vivian Maier

"The real question is, why did she do this kind of work?" In 2007 John Maloof, a local historian in Chicago, found a huge stack of film negatives in an auction and began scanning them. It quickly became clear that they were of some artistic importance, so he tried find out more about the elusive woman who took them: Vivian Maier. Unfortunately by the time he’d put the work together and tracked her down, she had passed away in early 2009. This documentary follows his efforts to finish developing her film, looking at the images, making prints of them, and ultimately trying to gain some posthumous recognition for Maier through various gallery showings and print sales. There’s no denying that the images we see are objectively good, and I can see why they have resonated with so many people. I love the pictures too! I struggle to get over the ethical concerns around publishing her work. This is a woman who lived a long life and took pictures for most of it. There were hundreds of thousands…