Finding Vivian Maier

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.