Vivian Maier

September 11, 2017
Bannos, a professor at Northwestern University, constructs a meticulously researched counternarrative to the public depiction of photographer Vivian Maier (1926–2009) as a reclusive Chicago nanny who moonlighted as a street photographer. Bannos argues that Maier’s work has been overshadowed by the unconventional backstory of how her photographs first came to prominence. In 2007, a real estate agent named John Maloof bought a large box of Maier’s negatives from the storage facility that 81-year-old Maier could no longer afford to rent. Maier’s work gained traction online after Maloof uploaded scans to Flickr, leading to a “Maier industrial complex.” In the span of four years, Maier’s photographs were published in five photo books, exhibited in galleries in Los Angeles and New York City, and were the subject of an Academy Award–nominated documentary. The book follows Maier, who died in 2009, from her nomadic and tense early family life to her early photography in France to her Rolleiflex work on the streets of New York and her secretive life photographing the streets of Chicago. Bannos’s biography is a vital contribution to understanding the historical relevance of Maier’s work and an important challenge to the way in which Maier’s work and legacy have been represented thus far. 30 halftones.

September 15, 2017

Vivian Maier (1926-2009) was a prolific, skillful photographer who took thousands of photographs during her lifetime. Her work was not discovered until after her death, when the contents of her storage units--including hundreds of thousands of negatives--were sold at auction. Since then, her images have been widely disseminated through social media, exhibitions, books, even a full-length, award-winning documentary film, Finding Vivian Maier (2013). Because Maier chose not to show her photographs during her lifetime and left no heirs, her story and estate have been tangled in mystery and controversy. Presently, several men have claim to her images and have profited by not only selling her photos but also perpetuating the Maier "myth." By carefully analyzing the artist's images, Bannos (photography, Northwestern Univ.) skillfully tracks her entire adult life: work history, where she lived and traveled, and her interests, and is able to look past the mystique of the "eccentric nanny with a camera" to tell the true Maier story. The number of photographs here is limited to 30, but the book's strengths are Bannos's exhaustive research and her ability to connect the greater history of photography into the account of Maier's curious life. VERDICT This extraordinary work is recommended for all art history and photography enthusiasts.--Shauna Frischkorn, Millersville Univ., PA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017
Biography of a secretive photographer who became legendary after her death.In 2007, Vivian Maier (1926-2009) failed to make payments on five storage lockers in Chicago, causing the owner to offer its contents--hundreds of boxes--at auction. The boxes contained material from decades of hoarding: books, magazines, newspapers, and, most astonishingly, photographs--albums, prints, negatives, color slides, and more than 1,000 rolls of undeveloped film. By the time Maier died two years later, two of the buyers, Jeffrey Goldstein and real estate businessman John Maloof, already had initiated what was to become a lucrative "Vivian Maier Industrial Complex," selling, exhibiting, and promoting Maier's photographs and turning her into a celebrity. In her debut biography, Bannos (Art Theory and Practice/Northwestern Univ.) offers a cleareyed investigation of Maier's life, aiming to penetrate the myths surrounding her and to assess her stature as an artist. In a website, several monographs, and a movie, Maloof significantly shaped the myth of Maier as "a mysterious French nanny who was also, secretly, a photographer." Although Maloof did not cooperate with Bannos in her research, the thousands of images he published on his website supplemented more than 20,000 images from other collections, which Bannos attentively analyzed. Maier did earn a living as a nanny in New York and Chicago, but her work as a photographer dominated her life. Even when she had children in her care, she hung a camera around her neck and engaged in "purposeful" sightseeing in the U.S. and abroad. She refused to exhibit her photographs, though, and she "selectively, sometimes imaginatively, addressed any questions about her past." Families who employed her found her eccentric, demanding, opinionated and, as she aged, paranoid. In alternating chapters, Bannos juxtaposes Maier's biography with her afterlife. She effectively contextualizes Maier's aesthetics within the history of photography, and she makes a persuasive case for her talent and originality. In the end, though, the author is left with unanswered questions about Maier's personal life, her motivations to photograph, and her artistic aims. A sympathetic portrait of an artist who remains elusive.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from October 15, 2017
The story of the so-called nanny photographer made Vivian Maier an international sensation, but as Bannos, an associate arts professor at Northwestern University, observes in this assiduously researched and riveting biography, the glossy books and documentary film that first recounted Maier's life and showcased her photographs were primarily created by the men who purchased the vast archives found in her Chicago storage units in 2007 after she stopped paying the bills and realized they had acquired potentially lucrative treasures. Bannos tacks between fully chronicling Maier's fiercely independent and creatively intrepid life and thoroughly investigating the sale of her photographs and the questions raised about who has the right to profit from them. Bannos poignantly reveals the struggles of Maier's grandmother Eugenie, who left her remote French village for New York after having her daughter, Maria, out of wedlock, then thrived as a live-in cook, to Maria's work as a maid and her disastrous marriage. Born in New York in 1926, Maier survived a difficult childhood there and in France (where her heirs were eventually located), committed herself to photography, and took up domestic work to support herself and her art. Taking measure of the barriers women face, Bannos portrays Maier as nothing less than a consummate, prolific, world-traveling, uncompromising, and fearless artist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)