There are many ways to get the wrong picture about Vivian Maier. Call her a nanny, as if that was her identity, instead of a photographer. Call her just a Chicagoan or just a Frenchwoman, instead of a born Manhattanite and self-styled European. Call her Vivian, as if you know her well. Call her a mystery or an enigma, as if no one ever knew her, or ever could.
To get the right picture, look at her squarely, as she would look at you: on her own terms, from her own evidence of who she was and what she did. Only then can we begin to see Vivian Maier, woman and photographer, and begin to enter her world.
The story of the Vivian Maier phenomenon has been told so many times that it can now be reduced to a few short phrases:
Her storage lockers went into arrears.
A young man named John Maloof bought a box of her negatives.
He googled her name and found that she had died a few days earlier.
He discovered the woman known today as the mysterious nanny street photographer.
But rarely is a story as simple as the filtered- down version that results from multiple retellings. Each link in the chain of the Vivian Maier story branches to reveal a much more complex and nuanced saga. Our current lack of understanding of this woman and her passion for photography stems from oversimplifications of her emergence and packaged versions of the story.