Trama

A documentary on the late Vivian Maier, a nanny whose previously unknown cache of 100,000 photographs earned her a posthumous reputation as one of the most accomplished street photographers.

Real estate agent John Maloof explains how a trip to a local auction house, in search for old pictures to use for a history book about his neighborhood, resulted in him bidding and winning a box full of old negatives. John goes through the massive quantity of negatives, describes how impressed he is by the quality of the images, becomes quickly determined they are not reverent to his project and just puts them away. That could have very likely had been the end of the story, if the power of the images had not pushed him to fall in love with photography. John confides that his photo hobby quickly motivated him to set up a darkroom and devote large amounts of time printing. As he learned more about photography, he recognized that those negatives he had bought, then stored, were the work of a real master. In an attempt to confirm his suspicion, he selected about 100 images and put them online with the hope that the feedback would confirm his judgement as to the strength of the images.—Lane J. Lubell of Cinemashadow.com

While working on a history book in the winter of 2007, John Maloof, an avid flea market and auction attendee, purchases a box of negatives at an auction for $380 in hopes that he can find photographs for his project. He only knows that the photographs were taken by an unknown person named Vivian Maier. Although he does not find any photograph appropriate for his book, John does believe that the photographs have an artistic quality rivaling that of the most renowned photographers of the era. In whatever public forms he displays the photographs, he gets the same response to them from the general person on the street. In addition to eventually acquiring all the other boxes of negatives of Vivian's that were at the auction, John goes on a quest to find out as much as he can about Vivian to understand better the woman behind the camera and perhaps her motivations and/or the reason for the photographs themselves. Initially John has only what information in the boxes of negatives and her obituary recently posted online as leads. In his difficult search, John further acquires more of Vivian's items, including hundreds of thousands of negatives, photographs and undeveloped rolls of film, still and moving, taken by Vivian. He is able to discover that she was an eccentric, highly private, and a career nanny, often moving from job to job, always carrying her camera. Taking photographs seemed to be more important than her paid employment. Those that spent the most time with her throughout her life - her employers and charges - are only able to shed the on the surface perspective of Vivian. John will have to dig a little deeper to find out what may truly have been the woman behind the photographs, which are receiving acclaim in certain circles, but are still highly dismissed among the most traditional of critics, whose negative perspectives may be more about the process than the end product.—Huggo

The film opens up cutting between footage of a handful of people, each in their home, and each pensively waiting to be interviewed. The brief snippets shown clarify that each will be speaking about their recollections of the same woman, as a part of finding insight into the mystery. Switch to the filmmaker,John Maloof explaining how a trip to a local auction house, in search for old pictures to use for a book history of his neighborhood resulted in him bidding, and winning a box full of old negatives. John, goes through the massive quantity of negatives, describes how impressed he was by the quality of the images, quickly determined they were not relevant to his project and just put them away. That could have very likely had been the end of the story, if the power of the images had not pushed him to fall in love with photography. John confides that his photo hobby quickly motivated him to set up a darkroom and devote large amounts of time shooting. As he learned more about photography, he recognized that those negatives he had bought, then stored, were the work of a real master. In an attempt to confirm his suspicion, he selected about 100 images and put them online with the hope that the feedback would confirm his judgement as to the strength of the images. He got his confirmation!

Mr. Maloof had the artistic vision and business savvy to go back to that auction house, track-down others that had bought Vivian's negatives that day and buy them all, returning the collection to whole. The amount of images was truly astounding, and total over 100,000, and unlike today's digital world, she was shooting primarily with a Rolleiflex Camera, a roll of 120 film holds 12 images.

In addition to the film, John found receipts, notes and just enough information to attempt to find out who was this prolific mystery woman. Interestingly, it was not that difficult to discover who she was and people that knew her, the secret was that she had been a masterful artist. Everyone knew her as the slightly odd, but rather nice nanny.

• Lane J. Lubell of Cinemashadow.com