Finding Vivian Maier - B

Unrated, 84 minutes

Fascinating doc "Finding Vivian Maier" attempts to give insight into reclusive photographer

There are seemingly endless documentaries about whatever subject you want to choose, but "Finding Vivian Maier" is one of the more oddly fascinating ones as it seeks to uncover the mystery behind a famous street photographer. Exactly who is Vivian Maier? Now considered a famous American street photographer who lived in Chicago, Vivian Maier was a nanny for 40 years who secretly took over 100,000 photographs that went unseen during her lifetime. Since buying her work by chance at auction, amateur historian John Maloof has crusaded to put this prolific photographer in the history books. Maier's strange and riveting life and art are revealed through never-before-seen photographs, films, and interviews with dozens who thought they knew her. Unconventional but compelling, "Finding Vivan Maier" tries to give historical record to a fascinating, mysterious photography who was little known by those around her. There are dozens of interviews by historian and documentary filmmaker Maloof, including talk show host Phil Donahue of all people, who hired Maier as his nanny, though most of the details of Maier's life come through the thousands of her arresting (and mostly black-and-white) photographs taken anonymously on the streets of Chicago and other places. As interesting a subject as Maier is, there's only so much you can say about a reclusive artist who had no family and no close friends to speak of (it sheds little light on her personal life except for the brief interactions people had with her), except to show her many photographs, which Maloof does abundantly. Maier's story, as bizarre as she/it was, deserves to be told, but more important is her work that came from the mystery of who she really was.

Wes's Grade: B