The film opens with clips of some of Maier’s former charges, now fully grown, puzzling over how to describe her. They use words like “paradoxical”, “bold”, “mysterious”, and “eccentric”. But if there was one thing they could all agree on, it was that Vivian Maier was very, very private. Following this is Maloof’s exposition of his first contact with Maier’s work. During work on a history project in 2007 for the city of Chicago, he went searching for photographs in an auction house, where he bought one box out of a set that was filled with negatives. Although he ended up not using the photos for his book, he eventually goes through them and begins to notice a pattern of rather phenomenal shots. Having been told the box belonged to a ‘Vivian Maier’ he tried looking her up and found nothing. Then, as the documentary shows with rather typical screenshots of a computer screen, he uploads some photos to Flickr and the work takes off. Before he knows it, he has a mystery to solve. Who could have taken so many photos and then just left them in a box unprinted?

Alternating between interviews with the parents and children who interacted with Maier and shots of her photographs, the documentary begins to explore the puzzle she left behind. Maloof finds his way to a storage unit that is practically overflowing with boxes filled with anything you could imagine. People said she kept everything—and they meant it. Newspapers, clothes, undeveloped film, uncashed income checks, even teeth! Maier was a pack rat, who it seems felt she had to keep everything and take it with her too. Families that hired Maier all described a similar situation; she would arrive with stacks of boxes that could fill a room. Another consistent memory from her charge is that she always had a camera around her neck, and she was always taking pictures. Despite taking hundreds of thousands of photos, nobody ever saw them. All the evidence seems to point to a very secretive woman who would not have wanted anyone to see her work. But then why take so many photos?

Maloof seeks to answer this question as he works to piece together her life’s story. His amateur sleuth work brings him into contact with the New York Public Records office, and he uncovers that Maier did not have much family, but the records that could be found suggest they were equally as private. The limited information that was uncovered about her family leads him to a small town in France where he comes into contact with an elderly cousin, who appears to be Maier’s only living relative. Very few people seem to know anything about Maier or remember her with any real clarity, but Maloof does his best to interview all of them in the documentary.

Maloof interviews other prominent photographers and gallery curators for an insight into the quality of Maier’s work and each of them praised her skill. They spoke of a humanity in her photography that is rarely seen. Her work displayed a sense of humor and a sense of tragedy. Maier appeared interested in what it meant to be human. Her work exemplifies the qualities of street photography. Her subjects were often individuals caught unawares or lightly posed in daily scenes of life. Maier shot in both black and white and color film. Maier seemed to revel in discreetly photographing her subjects and seems to reveal an affinity for the poor; possibly because like them, she struggled to get by. Demonstrating an awareness of politics and society, she addressed tough topics like the Watergate scandal through short films.

Audiences have the ability to see a range of different shots as Maier’s work has been interspersed throughout the documentary. The accompanying by a score of lilting, mysterious music that feels like it speaks to Maier’s character. Despite such beautiful works, the documentary highlights how she, at the time of the film’s release, had yet to be accepted by much of the art world. A number of artists became famous posthumously, yet Maloof faces push back as he tries to bring her the recognition she deserves. As a result of the way she sequestered her work the film and negatives remained incredibly well preserved. As the film ends, Maloof is still pressing on with the development of her film and spreading awareness about her talent.  

Overall, the film does a wonderful job of answering many of the questions raised concerning the secretive nature of her work. The technique of interspersing interviews with scanned works allows audiences to experience it for themselves. However, much like the circumstances around her work, Vivian Maier remains an enigma. Interviews throughout the film told conflicting stories of her character going so far as to reference abuse and neglect. Viewers are left with several questions, including, why did she never reveal her work? Why take so many pictures and preserve the work so well if you intended for them to fade into obscurity? The driving force behind this enormous body of work remains unknown. As a result, despite what the title suggests, Vivian Maier remains as stubbornly elusive in death as she was in life.

The movie begins with a calming montage of Georgia O’Keeffe painting with several of her own artworks fading in and out to calming music, with the overlay of her voice explaining the meaning behind her paintings. By including this opening scene, the movie provides the viewer with an understanding of Georgia O’Keeffe’s philosophical values as a painter and provides a foundational knowledge of the effect her lover, Alfred Stieglitz, will have on her artworks and confidence. In the movie, Georgia O’Keeffe requests that her works be taken down from an exhibition, as she is clearly not happy with any of her paintings. However, Alfred Stieglitz declines, defending her work, as he believes she is the definition of pure “raw intuitive talent.” In this scene especially, the movie does a powerful job of depicting Georgia O’Keeffe as a typical twentieth-century woman artist; having the talent, but lacking the confidence to go anywhere with it, as men dominated this time in history. This theme is very powerful, especially in today’s world as it makes it easy for viewers and young female artists to relate to O’Keeffe’s situation and lack of confidence and her works.

As Stieglitz and O’Keeffe begin to live their life, O’Keeffe’s painting career benefits from Stieglitz’s confidence boost, and Stieglitz’s photography career continues to benefit from the new-found feminine inspiration O’Keeffe gives him. This mutual relationship gives off a consistent effect in respect to the theme of the film. By both parties benefiting from each other, it brings into focus the idea of love and emotion being the ultimate driving force and backbone of these artists. This is beneficial to the film, as the theme stays consistent with the dramatic actions of the characters. When O’Keeffe refuses to come back to Stieglitz after he was caught cheating, Stieglitz has a sobbing episode and a mere heart attack on the steps of his house. Although this part also seems to be a little elongated and overdramatized, I believe it was also still a powerful decision of the moviemakers in order to further emphasize the overall message of the ups and downs of love being the prime motivation behind these two artists’ works. 

Although Stieglitz builds O’Keeffe’s confidence, as she becomes more famous Stieglitz becomes more controlling with the relationship and O’Keeffe’s progress as a painter, and the two quickly become turbulent as Stieglitz exhibits the nude pictures he took of O’Keeffe to his viewers in New York. Spotlights and heavy music make this confrontation scene slightly overdramatic, as the narrator explains how after her nude photographs are seen by New York, she becomes famous and people start to buy her work for her name, not her talent. With this scene comes many questions concerning if that is how O’Keeffe really wants her own artwork to be seen and appreciated. This scene makes the viewer aware of O’Keeffe’s contradictory attitude towards her fame coming from Stieglitz’s pictures, adding to the dramatic feeling of the movie and staying consistent with the film’s message of tough love and emotion as artistical motivation. This is an important aspect of the film, as it not only portrays the development of O’Keeffe’s character and career but explains how people began to appreciate the femininity seen within her works, as the film’s narrator states “the essence of every woman is within every stroke she makes, every color she chooses.” As her flower paintings fade in and out of this scene, the narrators continue to highlight the power of her artistic femininity seen on the canvas, bringing to focus her clear, smooth brush strokes and soft but complementary color choices. This is one of the few points in the movie where her actual work is seen, however, the timing of it was powerful and appropriate in order to explain to the viewer these feminine aspects that caught the eye of Stieglitz and the rest of New York.

As an interpretation of the real happenings between the artists O’Keeffe and Stieglitz, the film portrayed their relationship from a great point of view in the sense that it shows both the emotions of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz as their relation turns turbulent. In conclusion, the entire storyline of the film itself was slightly distracting from the physical made art of O’Keeffe, however the overdramatizing of her relationship through the plot, and film making decisions of including spotlights and heavy music, proved to be totally necessary as it provides insight to the troubled love and emotion behind her works.

It was a point in the movie where Arbus was shown being shy, she was talking out loud to her friends but she was sad because she didn’t know what she was doing with her life. Arbus was living behind her husband’s shadow. This is what made Arbus push to take her own portraits. Arbus finds her passion for portraits when she finds a mysterious man who lives in her building. His mysteriousness caught her attention. But evidently she falls in love. The mysterious man was covered in hair everywhere you can think of, but when he went outside he would cover his face with a creepy mask and scarf. It would remind you of a man in disguise. Arbus reminded you of a housewife. She looked very strange. Anything that caught her eye or attention she viewed it mysteriously. The beginning of the movie catches your attention by starting Arbus off on a train ride and ending up in a nudist community. This appears again when she meets the mysterious neighbor Lionel and he invites her to a friend’s house where they appear naked and comfortable. 

As she keeps hanging out with Lionel (the neighbor), her husband and kids start to feel neglected by her absence. What made Arbus so attracted to Lionel was that he wasn’t just mysterious, his house was too, which influenced her pictures. She had a variety of portraits of all objects and sceneries in his house. There were a lot of paintings on the wall, sculptures, and unique objects.  As she captures portraits in his house you can tell how amazed Arbus really was with his collection, especially for his apartment to be so small and cluttered. 

Lionel had problems of his own. He could remind you of Arbus when it came down to them being comfortable with themselves. Lionel hated how hairy he was. He used to shave himself every day before school so he wouldn’t get bullied. Similar to Arbus hiding her passion for photography because it was her “husband’s thing. She stayed behind his shadow because she didn’t have the courage to try. Once Lionel became comfortable with Arbus he didn’t try to hide his fur skin. But in the beginning, he blindfolded her or told her to “turn around” when he was coming. Arbus and Lionel eventually broke out from the negativity and felt comfortable within themselves.

After interviewing this movie, I came to the realization that this movie wasn’t about art from the outside world only, but art within themselves as well. Now I say this because Arbus was a shy woman. She didn’t use color in her portraits. The portraits were presented in black and white but maybe there’s color when you think deep into the photo. Arbus was attracted to mysteriousness so her portraits captured the items but gave the viewers a chance to think, “okay why did Arbus capture this? What’s special about this picture?”

Besides the viewers thinking deeply, the movie was portrayed as a love movie. It reminds you of Beauty and the Beast. They both didn’t love themselves fully until they met one another. The art showed what she took portraits of but it never gave us viewers reasons why she took these portraits and how she felt on them. I wouldn’t recommend this movie for an art history class because it didn’t give great detail on why she is an artist. The movie was based on love and the art within. The purpose of the movie was to show us the real imaginary art in Arbus portraits.  Arbus captured photos of basic things but in her eyes she could see everything in it. She imagined the portraits to what she thought it should be. I would recommend an art class presenting this movie only because in art class we see paintings as how the painter presents it to be. As you learn more about art and its history behind it, you hear that there is more knowledge and significance in the painting that they wanted the viewers to see. The viewers just had to find it, sometimes using our “imagination.” Arbus allowed us to believe the unbelievable, which is our imagination. That is why she created the “Imaginary portrait.”

The movie opens with Diane Arbus arriving at someone’s home where the people were nude. It looked like they were very comfortable in their own skin and tried to persuade Diane to do the same, but she declined it. Diane looked nervous but later we learn that she is more experimental than we thought. Later, in the movie we meet a couple more important characters. We meet Diane’s husband who is a photographer. He takes pictures that will sometimes get featured in magazines. Which is shown in a scene where the husband Allan lined up women who were ironing cloths for an advertisement. In the movie there was a scene where Diane was asked what her job was in relation to her husband. She ended up getting annoyed with the question because she could not think of anything to say. I think she felt like she was just living in her husband’s shadow the whole time. After that scene she looks out of a random window and sees this strange fellow moving into the apartment. This was important because it foreshadows an important character that will be part of her life in the end. The movie starts to pick up after that because Diane will end up finding a clue later in her bathroom that will lead her to this stranger.

As her relationship with her husband starts to fizzle out, she looks more and more to this stranger. After she finds a key in the bathroom she goes up to the top where the stranger lives to ask for a portrait picture of himself. Later on, she gets a whole lot more than the picture she originally intended to take. When she entered the stranger’s apartment the room was filled with art objects. There were paintings on the walls, fancy objects, and other little things that could be related to an art form. This is where we learn that the stranger himself is a form of art because he is not your average person. The stranger has thick hair all over his body from literal head to toe.

After this scene Diane starts to come around his apartment more and more but now with a camera. She takes pictures of so many objects and displays to really capture the whole apartment. In my opinion her doing this really helped me realize how much art was truly crammed into this small space. The reason I say this is because we all know that apartments in the city are known for being expensive and tiny. I feel like this movie really made sure that every square inch of that apartment had some sort of detail towards it. In the basement there was a unique piece of art work which was the stranger’s chair that he would use for shows. In the movie we learn that for a good amount of the stranger’s life he had to hide the fact that he was so hairy. He said that at 5am everyday before school he would shave his whole body so the kids at school would not make fun of him.

After watching this movie, I still come to the conclusion that there were only a few aspects of art history in this movie. We see a lot of art in the movie, but we don’t take a deeper look into the art as the movie goes on. I felt as if the movie was based more on a love scene than an art one. It also did not help that the movie was extremely slow to begin with. I think the overall goal of the movie was to show that art can be found in many different forms. All in all, I would not recommend this movie to another to watch if they are trying to learn aspects of Arbus’s career and work. If that person is just looking for an interesting movie to watch then I would recommend this movie.  

After reading about the real Diane Arbus, I learned how misrepresented she was in this movie. She was portrayed as a dull woman with an obsession for the grotesque and freakish. The real Diane did have a love for the oddities of the world but was by no means this drab and lifeless of a character. The addition of a fake lover in Lionel to convey her love for people who were born with abnormalities is a horrible way to show this. There are no any reports of her having physical relations with these freaks, if anything she was in love with how it made other people feel and the thoughts it put into one’s head. Arbus was equally disgusted and in awe of, but by no means in love with or sexually attracted to them, so adding Lionel as one of the main protagonists in this movie is not only boring but it is inaccurate.

Arbus did almost all of her work after divorcing her husband yet the entire movie takes place while she is still with her husband. This movie barely shows any of Arbus’ work and it most definitely does not convey the impact she has made in the world of photography. We barely see if any of Diane’s work in this movie. This is not even a movie about art it’s a movie about a fake love. This movie should have added more of her work, shown less of a fake love story, and more of her time going out and finding the oddities that made her famous.

The movie ends in a way that can almost make you feel a bit happy. Diane’s life, however, did not end like that, she committed suicide at the age of 48. The movie portrayed her life like a fairytale when her life was all too real. When you look at one of Diane’s photographs you are sent into a deep thought wondering about life. She is provoking your thoughts and possibly offending you or exciting you. This movie did neither of these things for me. You are not left with an uneasy feeling in your stomach or a flutter in your heart, and if you knew the life of Diane Arbus you would be ashamed of this movie. If you did not know her life you would just be left bored.

It is a stretch to be able to talk about the art works in this movie because there were very few. For the first hour of the movie it is only Diane’s husband Allen who was doing any of the photography work. You get a brief glimpse into some of her style of work when she first arrives into Lionel’s home and the camera shows pictures of transsexual women, tattooed men, and people with enlarged limbs. Just like Diane’s work, this left you wanting to see more. But, sadly you never really do, you are left with Lionel, an imaginary character who has a disease that makes him grow hair like a dog.

In one of the endings scenes it does kind of show what Diane’s work in real life may have been trying to do. In the end when Diane shaves Lionel and it reveals his body and the face of a regular man it shows that these “freaks” may not be freaks at all. It shows that even though the outside may be ugly, distorted, or mutilated, underneath all that there is still a human being. This scene is one of the few scenes that I think represents Arbus’ true thought process. It makes you think “what if I looked like that but had the same mind and soul.” It makes you think how different life would be just because you aren’t like everyone else on the outside. It’s unfortunate that this movie does not have more scenes like this one.

Initially, Fur does a fairly commendable job at setting the backdrop of Arbus’ life.  We see her and her husband, Allan Arbus, setting up for a seemingly upscale fashion show.  Diane came from a wealthy background; her mother and father being the owners of Russeks department store on 5^th Avenue, which sold furs and other high fashion to an upper-class community.  This is shown in some of the initial scenes, with the fashion show being held in their apartment.  She lived and worked in her Manhattan apartment, assisting Allan in his advertising photography business where he shot for magazines such as Glamour, Seventeen, and Vogue.  While she set up the shoots and posed the models, he photographed the scenes. Soon, we see Diane’s desire to break free, so to speak, of her life as a mother and housewife.  Having a vast knowledge of cameras and photography from her hands-on experience with her husband, she uses photography as a way to liberate herself. 

This is the point in the movie where things take a bizarre turn and the lines between fact and fiction are blurred.  Those unfamiliar with the life of Diane Arbus may have a hard time following the metaphorical approach used to depict her life, and even those who are familiar may have trouble keeping up.  Arbus befriends her upstairs neighbor, a former circus ‘freak’ named Lionel with a rare disease which causes him to grow copious amounts of hair all over his body. She leaves her family at all hours under the guise of photographing the neighbors, actually spending time with Lionel and other former circus performers and characters from the city: a little person, a woman from the burgeoning S&M community, little people, a giant, and many more.  As the pair’s friendship grows stronger, they spend more time together and eventually fall in love.

While this portion of the story is fictitious, it does draw on Arbus’ real-life inspirations for her later photography.  There was never a portion of her life in which she befriended her hairy ex-circus performer upstairs neighbor, however, she did famously photograph individuals from circus sideshows, or ‘freak shows.’  She was also known for her photography of transvestites, little people, strippers,giants, nudists, and the S&M community among others.  Arbus often grew extremely close to the individuals she photographed, from her most mundane subjects to the most shocking of social outcasts.  We see her interest in and connection to those who are frequently ‘othered’ by society in the film.  However, it does so in a much more literal form.

The film is most definitely not without its many faults.  It is true that Arbus broke many barriers with the subject matter of her photography; taking portraits of those who would have been considered shocking and risqué individuals at the time they were shot in the 1960s. However, Fur portrays them as her sole source of inspiration, not to mention the fact that none of her actual work is discussed or presented in the film. Nothing beyond her connection with these individuals is really discussed in relation to work as a photographer,aside from her introduction into photography with her husband.  Any viewer who knew nothing about Arbus or her work would assume that she had an unnatural obsession with sideshow performers and shaving hairy men; a reference to a rather unpleasant and unnecessary scene from the movie.  Her work is intensely personal, and her subject is the human heart, whomever that heart may belong to.  Much of her later work which came after the time span of the film captures thought provoking and emotional portraits of everyday individuals, such as “Identical twins, Roselle, NJ, 1967,” and “Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, NYC, 1962.”  These more mundane portraits are among her most celebrated works, yet the film choses to focus solely on her more atypical subjects.  While it does do a good job making sure she is not portrayed as exploiting these individuals and delves into her relationships with her subjects, it does little to discuss the rest of her work.  Those who decide to investigate her work further after watching the film may do so with the expectation that they will find more shocking subjects, and rather unenthused and disappointed when they find portraits of everyday people as her primary subjects.

Fur is a wholly original interpretation of Diana Arbus’ life, and it is up to the viewer to determine if it accurately represents her and her work or not.  While the film is an interesting take on her work and personal relationships, it strays far from fact and by no means is, or claims to be, a biographical account.  This movie is merely entertaining, and viewers will likely leave amused and knowing little more about the photographs or stories behind the work of Diane Arbus.

The movie took the form of interviewing numerous people who encountered Vivian Maier. At first, Maloof found people who Maier used to nanny for. Later, Maloof uncovered more people from her past. I thought this was a very personal way to construct this movie. It was very interesting how certain groups of people all described her in the same way. For example, many of the people she looked after, called Maier odd and occasionally mean. One woman recalled Maier shoving food down her throat because she would not clear her plate. Towards the end of the documentary, the people in the town she stayed in described her as lonely and short with conversation, tending to sit alone on a park bench. I do think the interviewees could have done a better job of introducing themselves. Eventually,you could figure out what they had to do with Maier, but it was not clear at first.With this documentary already being almost a mystery, it would have been nice to have certain parts just specifically told to the viewer.

The traits that were consistent in the description of Maier were that she was mysterious, secretive, eccentric and a loner. She kept just about everything and often hid her items in other items in boxes with locks on them. Her dress was very outdated and had a walk where she swung her arms out in front of her. Those from her past kept describing her odd habits and then moved into a darker side of Maier. She had a fear of men, suggesting previous assault. One of the women said that Maier would say “all men want is sex” and to “stay away from men.” Mairer had violent outbursts with the children that she looked after, often getting her dismissed from jobs. One of the children she looked after that claimed Maier would construct these “accidents” for her to get a photograph of them. These would include force feeding them or purposely scaring them. Her photography also displayed the everyday events of life, showing the happy and sad moments. She could have been so skilled in capturing the perfect shot because she was around a wide variety of people through being a nanny.

The history of Maier was rather confusing, in the movie you can see she gave out fake names, was very private, hoarded many of her belongings, and had a fake French accent. With all of this, it shows that Maier did not want to be recognized for her work and did not want others to know who she was. Many of the people she babysat thought she was from outside of the United States and were shocked when they found out she was from New York. I almost wish that the flow of her life was more organized. I feel like the layout of the film could have been confusing on purpose since the history of Vivian Maier was rather confusing. Even though as a view this was confusing at times, I feel like the directors did this on purpose in order to make the movie more of a mystery,like Maier herself.

As far as Vivian Maier’s work, it is stunning. The photos are black and white depicting daily scenes in life and some self-portraits. Many of the photographs shown in the movie were of people, but there were some of objects too, for example one was the inside of a trashcan. Maier had a twin lens Rollieflex, which allowed her to be more secretive when taking pictures of people. This added to her secretive and mysterious personality. I understand that the movie is called Finding Vivian Maier, but I felt as though there was little explanation about her work.  The documentary displayed a decent amount of Maier’s work. If the camera was not on one of Maier’s photographs, it was on Maloof, or one of the people he was interviewing. However, Maloof did say he acquired around 150,000 negatives. With this, the amount of her photos displayed was very minimal and I think a montage at the end of the film with more of her work would have been a nice addition. It also would have been nice if the movie makers grouped the photographs. While they were talking about the different places Maier traveled, they could have shown pictures from each place. Instead, the pictures shown almost seemed random.

This would not be a movie that I would have watched on my own. However, after watching it, I found it very fascinating how a woman with such talent kept her work so private. The time and dedication John Maloof put into uncovering the work of the mysterious photographer, Vivian Maier, is inspiring. At the beginning of the documentary, there was very little information on Maier and Maloof managed to piece together large pieces of her life to help us understand who Vivian Maier really was.

In the documentary titled, “Finding Vivian Maier”, the mystery of a nanny, now turned national icon through photography and art, is tracked step by step in order to gain an understanding of just who she had been. Amazingly, she kept her work as secretive as possible while alive and would not have been brought under the artistic spotlight if it hadn’t been for John Maloof. The artistic yet simple basis for Maier’s photos suggests a beauty in the reality of life and the many aspects that come along with it.

The film begins with Maloof explaining how he acquired photographic negative film coincidentally through auction in an effort to write a history book. As he unravels the unique and one of a kind photos, the history of the inaccurately documented woman known as Vivian Maier becomes more complex and more questions arise. Maier brilliantly captured subjects of everyday life, most while on the job as a nanny. One of the most prominent curiosities surrounding her photography is the question of why she kept all of the art to herself, capturing so many precious subjects during the early 1950’s. Perhaps this question is what makes Maier’s work so precious and beloved among the art community.  

The documentary does an exceptional job at interviewing those who can say they had Maier as a nanny, while they recall what they can of being under her supervision. An unrealistic aspect of these interviews was projected through how vividly some of the particular children at the time could recall events now, noting that it has been dozens of years since. For example, one woman claimed that she had been force fed and choked, which revealed the dark side of Maier. Along with this claim, the woman specified that when she was five years old, her nanny repeatedly hit her head on a bookcase because she could not tie her shoes correctly. It seems as though this type of accusation could have been made up in order to have an appearance on the Netflix documentary, keeping in mind that Vivian Maier’s popularity now reaches artists worldwide. Aside from this portion of the interviews, the documentary’s use of recollections by displaying the houses, parks, and locations that she was known for being familiar with gives the observer great visuals for the entire length of the film. It allows a connection to be made between the settings and the photographs. When watching the documentary, I found myself having little to no difficulty forming a mental image of Vivian’s life. Due to her life and travels being photographed first hand, most of the locations and matters that were discussed had pictures to go along with them.This not only led Maloof in the right direction when tracking Maier’s life but made it easier to educate others on her life’s work.

When discussing her photography and style, she was a woman way ahead of her time. Most 20^th century photography included posed subjects of men or women, the depiction of animals such as horses in motion, or depictions of average middle-class society. This is where Maier’s wide array of photographs flourished when comparing it to those of the same time frame. Although an exceptional amount of her photos were of street-based subjects, they seemed to dig deeper than just the basic idea.Of course, all art is subject to personal interpretation, and Maier’s photographs make it quite easy to apply one’s opinion to many of her subjects. For example, a photo of a white child getting his shoes shined by a black child can be deeper rooted regarding racial tensions in the 1950’s. Another example is a photo of an older man and woman sleeping on a bus with her head on his shoulder, interpreted in my eyes as growing old with love until your eyes close for the final time. These serve as examples of where simple photos may have had more complex meanings. The movie suggests these components through the interpretation of her work by some famous photographers of today.

Vivian Maier, leading a secretive yet artistic life, was successfully depicted throughout the documentary. John Maloof successfully revealed her identity to the world, regardless of what she may have wanted. Fortunately for the world of photography and art, the world can now enjoy the work of a nanny doing what she loved. Through the use of her real-life photographs, interviews with people she knew, and other aspects, the movie has given Vivian Maier the recognition she deserved. Not only can those who watch it learn of this woman’s life, but they may learn about what made her work so cherished and world renowned.