Photographer Vivian Maier takes a lot of self-portraits, so much so that it is rather overwhelming while watching the cult movie “Finding Vivian Maier,” by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel.
Maloof realized he found something good in 2007 when he bought the contents of Maier’s derelict storage locker at auction (for $380), and discovered 100,000 negatives, 700 rolls of color film, and 2,000 rolls of black-and-white film, taken during the decades that Maier worked as a nanny for wealthy families in New York and Chicago. he then set out to find her, and couldn’t which is wild as she was still alive, dying in 2009 at the age of 83.
Read more: C724 Capturing the shade of Vivian MaierThe key to the Maier cult is that she never published a thing during her life — instead, she stored it all away and that she took her Rolleiflex everywhere with her, on her various nanny jobs and eventually around the world.
What we learn is that she was born in Brooklyn New York on February 1, 1926. She had a brother and we learn from the film a family in France and she was tall and took photos of street life. Not much more, but we do see a lot of her photography in the film and learn how Maloof became totally entranced by this celluloid goddess. that’s about it.
Mapping Vivian D. Maier
download the chart for the photographer cum nanny vivian maier
This chart has been rectified for an Ascendant of 18 Sagittarius with her camera, Mars at Sagitarrius 25, right by its side. She is a Western Bowl Temperament Type that highlights her resourcefulness much like sewing aficionado Nancy Zieman. Her bowl with a rimmed opposition from the Moon in the Ninth (travelling for education) and Venus in the Third (seeing it through a keen eye) but it the scoop, seeing the world from the two generational planets of Neptune in the Eighth, capturing bits of forgotten things and Uranus in Pisces, distilling it (via photography) into a unique vision that was truly her gift.
If you cannot catch the movie, look at the pix on the Maloof site here. and be entranced.