Museum Management and Curatorship, 2014

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2014.888817

Misplaced: ethics and the photographs of Vivian Maier

Kevin Coffee
Kevin Coffee Museum Planning, 1333 W. Devon Ave, Suite 323, Chicago, IL 60660, USA

The exhibition Vivian Maiers Chicago is the most recent display of reproductions of the
artists negatives to be shown in a museum, this time at the Chicago History Museum
(USA) on view from June 2013 until January 2014 (Figure 1, Figure 2). Maier was an
American photographer (19262009), much of whose known work insightfully
documents post-World War II urbanity in the USA. She also traveled and photographed
globally during part of her working life. Focused on the intimate practices of ordinary
people, she found specialness within their everyday events.
Concurrent with museum exhibitions, Maiers work is now being shown internationally by commercial dealers and in smaller nonprofit spaces, coordinated by collectors
who, since her death in 2009, have taken possession of her negatives. Her work has
inspired three monographs compiled by those same collectors (Maloof and Dyer 2011;
Cahan and Williams 2012; Maloof and Avedon 2013). The Chicago History Museum
exhibition was organized by Jeffrey Goldstein, who sells reproductions of Maiers
negatives through Russell Bowman Art Advisory gallery. A second collector, John
Maloof, offers reproductions through Howard Greenberg Gallery1 in New York and in
collaboration with diChroma Photography in Europe. Maier reproductions have been
exhibited or are scheduled for Paris (France), Moscow (Russia), Valladolid (Spain), Tours
(France), Ghent (Belgium), and Gothenburg (Sweden), as well as at Brandeis University
and Washington State University Art Museum (USA).
Over a 40-year span from the early 1950s into the 1990s Vivian Maier created
more than 100,000 images, most of which remain unprinted. Her known collection of still
and moving images evince an ethnographic attitude activated by the post-war period and
perhaps reminiscent of contemporaries such as Robert Frank, Jay King, Danny Lyon, or
Garry Winogrand. Given that equation, however, some compositional and iconographic
qualities distinguish Maiers work.
First is her use of the 6 6 cm Rolleiflex camera; a twin-lens format that imposes the
tripartite discipline of square frame, fixed focal length lens, and parallax effect on the
viewing screen, all of which she mastered. Her compositions of lone figures, groups or
backward reflections in storefronts take great advantage of the format. While many other
documentarians were working with smaller 35-mm cameras by mid-century, Maiers
choice is nearly unique. Notably, two others also used the 6 6 outdoors Dorothea
Lange (intermittently) and Diane Arbus. However, unlike Arbus, who normally exposed
an entire roll of the same subject in order to gain one acceptable frame, Maier appears to
have rarely made serial images of a single subject.
Second is Maiers ability to negotiate the imaginary boundary between outsider and
insider represented in the photographer. A compelling reason that street photographers
2014 Taylor & Francis
This article was originally published with errors. This version has been corrected. Please see Erratum (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/
09647775.2014.904065)

K. Coffee

Figure 1.
Museum.

Vivian Maiers Chicago installation. Photograph provided by the Chicago History

choose a 35-mm camera is its unobtrusiveness. Maiers use of the larger Rollieflex
suggests a heightened ability to read the scene, an ease of movement within her
surroundings, and a rapport with her subject. Reproductions of contact sheets of images
made in India in 19592 and in Chicago in 1968 illustrate that process. Maier did not mainly
photograph people and situations personally familiar to her; she sought out social themes
in her urban excursions. Perhaps her photographs taken lakeside on a summers day in
affluent Wilmette, Illinois, were made while accompanying young charges to the beach,
but those images suggest immanent disorder coexisting alongside the familial cohort.
Maier documents both the vivacity of youth and the pensiveness of late adolescence.
That same summer, in a clear juxtaposition to privileged Wilmette, Maier sojourned
to the proletarian precincts of the west side of Chicago, following the assassination of
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. an area gravely scarred by the fires of civil outrage. On
those sidewalks and building stoops, she photographed children of similar age to those
she found in Wilmette, posing in kindred expressions of vivacity and pensiveness,
although socioeconomically quite distant.
A third distinction is Maiers profound conveyance of empathy for her subject and in
her compositions. Unlike some other photographers although perhaps in common with
Lange or with Marion Post there is neither pandering voyeurism nor alienation apparent
in Maiers work. I suggest that her view of her subjects was bound to and revealed in her
attitude toward her own life she led a working class existence as a domestic servant,
valorized working class lifeways comprehensively, and did so from an insiders
perspective. She recorded people and social practices as shared events, and her judgment
addressed to the viewer is to understand this as I saw it. In this regard, she comes much
closer to the true ethnographic than many of her contemporary documentarians.
In considering photographs as shared experience, critic John Berger noted:

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Figure 2.
Museum.

Vivian Maiers Chicago installation. Photograph provided by the Chicago History

Memory implies a certain act of redemption. What is remembered has been saved from
nothingness. What is forgotten has been abandoned. If all events are seen, instantaneously,
outside time, by a supernatural eye, the distinction between remembering and forgetting is
transformed into an act of judgment, into the rendering of justice, whereby recognition is
close to being remembered, and condemnation is close to being forgotten. (1980, 54)

Maiers photographs constitute a redemptive body of work that saved from oblivion not
simply a space in time, but people and social acts. Importantly, they reveal a predilection
for recording life events of the socially marginalized, combined with a comparative
analysis of that alterity in images of privileged individuals whose lives comprised her day
job. Maier did not find her subjects alien or odd as for example Diane Arbus or Walker
Evans might have quite the opposite. Maier seemed attenuated to many of the people
and situations she documented. She photographed in order to valorize, and she carefully
archived and kept track of her images for 50 years.
It appears that Maier did not proof or print a great majority of her negatives and, like
Garry Winogrand, she left a large quantity of exposed but unprocessed film at her death.
Unfortunately, unlike Winogrands associates, no one has stepped forward with a record

K. Coffee

of her photographic intent. It is difficult to determine from comments made by the current
holders of her negatives whether she made any display prints. It appears that collateral
documentation may also have been dispersed.
Maiers dedication to her art is still more remarkable given the practical difficulty that
she confronted in practicing it. Her tenacity in producing tens of thousands of images
demonstrates her mastery as a photographer. Even in the American boom economy of
the 1950s and early 1960s, photography was expensive. The requirements of materials
and lab services surely outstripped her income as a childrens attendant, and her work as
an au pair must have consumed her daily attention throughout a long work week. We
may assume that most of her photographs were made in her spare time. Thus, the ascent
of her formal ability shown in her photographs of the 1950s is notable.
Maier may have been stymied by her lack of resources. Although she took care to
process her own monochrome films, she apparently did not have access to a printing
darkroom. Indeed, for most of her life, her belongings were stored away in boxes, in an
employers garage or a rented warehouse. When she could no longer find work, because
she was deemed too old to monitor children, she lived in a small rented apartment and put
her many boxes of negatives and other belongings into storage. It was her misfortune to
be retired in this way, in America.
In November 2008, Vivian Maier slipped and fell on a sidewalk. She was
hospitalized, and then transferred to a long-term care facility, but did not recover. She
died on 21 April 2009. Three of the now-grown children for whom she had cared years
earlier signed an obituary notice in the 23 April Chicago Tribune. Notably, they attested
to her abilities as an artist, intellect, and socially responsible role model.
Vivian Maier, proud native of France and Chicago resident for the last 50 years died
peacefully on Monday. Second mother to John, Lane and Matthew. A free and kindred spirit
who magically touched the lives of all who knew her. Always ready to give her advice,
opinion or a helping hand. Movie critic and photographer extraordinaire. A truly special
person who will be sorely missed but whose long and wonderful life we all celebrate and will
always remember.3

Dividing the Goodies

What transpired in the year prior to her death is additionally tragic; her entire collection of
photographs, negatives, and other work were seized from her, ostensibly because she
failed to maintain payments to the warehouse where she had stored her boxes. Thus, at
the age of 81 years, after carefully archiving her lifes work over five decades, Vivian
Maier was relieved of her entire portfolio for non-payment of rent (an amount that was
possibly less than a few hundred dollars).
Through the auctions of her stored possessions, at least three collectors purchased large
caches of Maiers negatives, unprocessed film, unedited motion pictures, and machine-made
prints. Printers of various competencies4 are reproducing Maiers negatives, which are now
on offer through agents in New York and Chicago and consigned to others. The procession
of gallery shows and monographs has been ongoing since 2011, accompanied by a steady
public relations effort about the nanny photographer.5
Some of her stored possessions were purchased by John Maloof described in an
October 2011 New York Times profile as a one-time real estate agent and eBay
entrepreneur in search of illustrations of Chicago.6 Maloof, who now holds more than

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100,000 of Maiers negatives, reportedly did what came naturally: he cut up some of the
negatives and hawked them on eBay (ODonnell 2011). Maloof has commented on his
own website and in at least one interview that he knew of Maiers authorship months
before her death and thought about meeting her but chose not to.7
Jeffrey Goldstein, described as a flea-market aficionado who holds another 19,000
Maier negatives, says he first learned about Maier in 2010.8 Goldstein markets
reproductions under the mark of Vivian Maier Prints Inc. and has produced a
monograph with text by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams. In the May 2012 New
York Times, Cahan depicted Maiers photographs as found in an abandoned storage
locker in Chicago in 2007 and sold at auction later that year. By the time, the buyers
realized some 2 years later exactly what they had, Ms. Maier had passed away at age
83 (Cahan 2012). In his curatorial introduction to the Chicago History display, Cahan
describes it as part of an enormous photo diary that Vivian Maier created to document
her life auctioned off in 2007 after Maier failed to pay several months of rent on her
North Side storage locker, implying the trade of negatives for rent. At the very least,
Cahans chronology does not align with events.
A third collector and acquaintance of Maloof, Ron Slattery, frankly admitted that he
bought a ton of her stuff at small auction and posted some of Maiers photos on his
website in July 2008. Next to one of Maiers photographs, Slattery writes, part of what I
got are 1200 rolls of her undeveloped film. They sit in boxes next to my desk. Everyday, I
look at those boxes and wonder what kind of goodies are inside.9 In response to repeated
inquiries on the Hardcore Street Photography Flickr blog in February 2011, Slattery
described how he and Maloof knew of Maier months before her death and refrained
from contacting her. Further, he suggests that Maloofs intent at that time was to collect
her negatives for posthumous publication.10
Proscriptions and prescriptions
A close reading of US copyright law indicates that none of the parties who acquired
Maiers negatives from the storage warehouse or afterward and are publishing them
now without her written permission have a legal right to do so.11 None of the current
publishers hold copyright to her negatives; that right devolves to Maiers estate and heirs
for at least 70 years from the date of her death, as per US Code Title 17 (as defined in
106, 202, 302, and 303). Paragraph 106 specifically states that only the owner of
copyright has the right to reproduce, or to prepare derivative works, or to display them, or
to distribute copyrighted work, and those who now hold Maiers negatives ought to
carefully read paragraph 202.
202 Ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, is distinct
from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied. Transfer of ownership
of any material object, including the copy or phonorecord in which the work is first fixed,
does not of itself convey any rights in the copyrighted work embodied in the object; nor, in
the absence of an agreement, does transfer of ownership of a copyright or of any exclusive
rights under a copyright convey property rights in any material object.

The disposition of Vivian Maiers estate,12 and specifically her photographic collection,
raises serious questions of legal and ethical practice on the part of those who collect art,
and of those who trade, publish and display it, including in galleries and museums. The
consignment of Maiers possessions to auction took place under uncertain circumstances,

K. Coffee

but the seizure of her negatives13 did not convey permission to reproduce them, much
less the copyright to them, either to the warehouse or to its assignees.
Taking control of the negatives and thereby saving them from possible destruction is
arguably a positive moral act. However, those who acquired Maiers negatives are not
archivists or conservators, and at best only began to investigate photographic collection
practice after their acquisitions. How they are storing and handling her processed and
unprocessed film is questionable, according to their own admission, and perhaps
physically injurious.14 Conversely, all evidence indicates that Maier was meticulous
and even archival in her processing and storage methods.
In 2009, Maloof posted queries to an Internet weblog asking for advice regarding his
newfound collection. Among the myriad suggestions made were several that he speak
with museums that have a curatorial emphasis in documentary photography. Reportedly,
Maloof did contact the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the
International Center for Photography in New York City, and George Eastman House in
Rochester, NY, and possibly other organizations. It appears that his inquiries comprised
proposals to exhibit, catalog, or publish the photographs he held, and those proposals
were declined.15
Museums, especially large ones, are sometimes assumed to possess expansive
curatorial and financial resources, but that is usually not the case. A novice collector
may not appreciate that organizational policies, strategies and finite budgets preordain
acquisitions and exhibition proposals. The largest photographic collections ordinarily
acquire just dozens of images each year; even a well-argued offer involving thousands or
even hundreds of negatives would be extraordinary. Given that Vivian Maiers work was
relatively unknown in 20092010, the merit of her photographs in relation to an
established collection would have been difficult for a curator to assess.
The unspoken problem through all of this, however, remains the provenance of the
negatives and the ownership claims to them. It is also possible that a museum would defer
judgment on Maiers negatives until a bone fide representative of her estate stepped
forward. Nonetheless, several non-profit galleries have joined with the various commercial dealers in exhibiting reproductions of Maiers negatives thus far, including the
Chicago Cultural Center, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMOCA), the Chicago History Museum, and the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts.
Perhaps those organizations assume that Goldstein or Maloof is entitled to represent
Maier because of their two efforts to collect and reproduce her negatives.
The International Council of Museums provides a series of principles to guide
museums toward ethical practice and those guidelines are relevant to this situation. For
example, paragraph 2.2 of the ethics code, Valid Title, recommends that no object or
specimen should be acquired by purchase, gift, loan, bequest, or exchange unless the
acquiring museum is satisfied that a valid title is held. Evidence of lawful ownership in a
country is not necessarily valid title, and paragraph 8.5, The Illicit Market, cautions
members of the museum profession should not support the illicit traffic or market in
natural and cultural property, directly or indirectly (International Council of Museums
2013, 12).
How is it that a public museum accredited by the American Alliance of Museums
might act in contradistinction to world standards for museum ethics? Are best ethical
practices being considered carefully enough in the presentation of Maiers photographs?

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Imagist of modernity
A comprehensive critique of Maiers photographs cannot be attempted unless a large
body of them is allowed to enter into conversation her conversation with those of the
present. To date, a handful of collectors have determined which pieces of her archive may
return to light and within what context. The privatized control of her archives, and the
online comments suggesting that parts of it are dispersed or possibly destroyed, point to
the current difficulty in reassembling the true context of her work.
Maiers esthetic vision although known to us from a still-limited selection of
reproductions seems indisputably situated within the community of first-class
photographers (Whelan 1995, 109) of the twentieth century. She presents a humanism
and sociality that are distinct from other post-war photographers working in America
such as Walker Evans, Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, or Garry Winogrand.
Her work is also distinct from the lyrical realism evident in pre-war photographers such
as Tina Modotti, Marion Post, Russell Lee, or Dorothea Lange. The posthumous
assertions regarding her reclusiveness seem at odds with her documentary style. She may
have been personally guarded, but certainly persistent in her ethno-realist investigations,
which reveal a subjective confidence and a deep interest with those she described.
It is gravely unfortunate that her work was not displayed while she was alive. Perhaps
specific information about why she did not or could not for lack of cultural capital
(Bourdieu 1984, 1196) was held in the other documents she stored. Maiers selfportraits and other images shown so far suggest that her photography and her life were
twinned efforts in search of cultural practices outside the parameters of the dominant
social order. Would she have found a receptive curator in Chicago or New York? Did she
disdain the private gallery process? One can only suppose. All of this underscores the
importance of her artwork to the public discourse.
Ironically, Maiers silence about her work sets the stage for its posthumous
commodification. The motives of those who have acquired her negatives seem grounded
in a generic interest in merchandising, as per John Maloofs October 2009 query to Flickr
readers, what do I do with this stuff? and Ron Slatterys reference to Maiers film as
goodies.16 Their interest is fundamentally commercial similar to entrepreneurs who
entered the housing market during the last decades real estate bubble to engage in quick
speculative transactions.17 The marketing of Maier reproductions leverages a contrived
narrative of her life as the reclusive nanny photographer a hybrid of Mary Poppins
and a compulsive amateur working without formal instruction, social connections, or
esthetic mentor ignoring the traditional route plotted for art history or art commerce.
Maiers death enables this narrative to proceed uncontested and assist in the subsequent
peddling in the art market and in monographs because while the nanny may not have
understood her worth, there are those coming after her who do, using the market as their
moral touchstone.
This neo-liberal ethic of monetization is a basic corollary of the post-modern turn
toward the analysis of the person, not by the broad sociality in which they act and
which Maier vividly documented but through the narrow aperture of the commodity
transaction. Her body of work was picked over after her death precisely because she
lacked the social, class connections to power and status unlike artists such as Stieglitz,
Steichen, Evans, or Adams whose portfolios comprise important collections in New York,
Rochester, Chicago, and San Francisco museums. Nowhere are questions raised about
legal obligations to protect her artistic and intellectual efforts, or the social responsibilities

K. Coffee

to assist the elderly which might have prevented her possessions from being taken in the
first place. Those require an advocate in court and Vivian Maier is now permanently
silenced. But she and her photography deserve better. If any might act in the public
interest to protect and conserve Maiers artwork, and the work of others like her, should
not we expect that of public museums?
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the Museum Management and Curatorship reviewers and also Susan Arthur
Whitson for commenting on an early draft of this essay and noting similarities between Maier and
Dorothea Lange. The analysis herein is, of course, my own.

Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.

5.
6.
7.

8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

13.

14.

http://www.howardgreenberg.com/#artists/194
See http://www.vivianmaier.com/print-sales/
Vivian Maier obituary. Chicago Tribune, 23 April 2009.
For the fine art market, Jeffrey Goldstein has partnered with Silver Gelatin Printing, in
Chicago. John Maloof is represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, which has
enlisted master printer Steve Rifkin to reproduce Maiers negatives. Goldstein also reports
enlisting technicians in the photo department of DuPage County (IL) Community College to
develop Maiers unprocessed films.
A Nannys Diary, New York Times, 5 October 2011.
A Nannys Diary, New York Times, 5 October 2011.
Vivian Maier, News, The Maloof Collection, at http://www.vivianmaier.com/news/ as of 5
July 2013. Maloof writes on his website that in 2008, (he) established the Maloof Collection
with the purpose of preserving and making publicly available the work of Vivian Maier. On
the street photography Flickr blog, he wrote I thought about meeting her in person prior but,
the auction house had stated she was ill so, I didnt want to bother her What do I do with this
stuff? Hardcore Street Photography weblog, at http://www.flickr.com/groups/onthestreet/
discuss/72157622552378986/ as of 5 July 2013.
Vivian Maier Prints, The Story, Jeffrey Goldstein Collection, at http://www.vivianmaierprints.
com/the-story.html as of 5 July 2013.
Ron Slattery, Bighappyfunhouse found photos story July 22, 2008, at http://www.
bighappyfunhouse.com/archives/08/07/22/12-30-34.html as of 5 July 2013.
What do I do with this stuff ? Hardcore Street Photography weblog, at http://www.flickr.com/
groups/onthestreet/discuss/72157622552378986/ as of 5 July 2013.
International copyright protection is affirmed by the Berne Convention for the Protection of
Literary and Artistic Works, which the United States signed in 1988; enacted in 1989.
Cook County Probate Court records show that attorney Lane Gensburg, asserting that Maier
suffered from dementia and chronic subdural hematoma, successfully petitioned for
Guardianship of a Disabled Persons Estate & Person on 28 January 2009. On the day of
Maiers death, Gensburg submitted a probate inventory, which was approved that same day,
comprising a bank account of US$3,884 and used books, clothing, and misc. personal items.
Maiers money assets were divided among assorted claimants and her estate closed by the court
on 20 November 2009.
The Illinois Probate Act holds, in part, that If there is no surviving spouse and no known
kindred of the decedent all other personal property of the decedent of every class and
character, wherever situate, or the proceeds thereof, shall escheat to this State and be delivered
to the State Treasurer pursuant to the Uniform Disposition of Unclaimed Property Act [I755
ILCS 5/19-11]. Nonetheless, 17 USC Chapter 5, holds that the Federal US Courts have
jurisdiction in all civil and criminal matters regarding copyright.
Other suggestions of poor stewardship: the cover photograph on Jeffrey Goldsteins Out of the
Shadows monograph is over-exposed and lacks mid-tones; the reproductions shown at the
Chicago Cultural Center were made with an ink-jet printer; some of Maiers 8-mm film now
appears on YouTube edited by John Maloof and Chris Siskel.

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15. Edward Earle, curator of collections, International Center of Photography, personal communication July 2013; Karen Irvine, curator, Museum of Contemporary Photography, personal
communication July 2013; Alison Nordstrom, curator-at-large, George Eastman House,
personal communication July 2013; Repeated requests by the author to Mr. Maloof and his
publicist to discuss the Maloof Collection during July 2013 have gone unanswered.
16. That sentiment is further demonstrated within the Flickr weblog Hardcore Street Photography,
by posters who refer to Maiers negatives as a pot of gold, at http://www.flickr.com/groups/
onthestreet/discuss/72157622552378986/ as of 5 July 2013.
17. Maloof engaged in speculative real estate and was a top producer at the second-largest Century
21 office in the Chicago area, according to the 2007 amazon.com entry for his how-to book:
The Real Estate Agents Guide to FSBOs.

Notes on Contributor
Kevin Coffee is a consultant and independent museum scholar. He is formerly head of exhibitions
for the American Museum of Natural History and for the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and taught
in the art & design and museum studies programs at Columbia College Chicago and Seton Hall
University.

References
Berger, J. 1980. About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books.
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Cahan, R. 2012. Touring the Nanny Photographers Past. New York Times, 8 May.
Cahan, R., and M. Williams. 2012. Vivian Maier, Out of the Shadows. Chicago, IL: City Files Press.
International Council of Museums. 2013. International Council for Museums Code of Ethics for
Museums. Paris: ICOM.
Maloof, J., and E. Avedon. 2013. Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits. New York: Powerhouse Books.
Maloof, J., and G. Dyer. 2011. Vivian Maier, Street Photographer. New York: Powerhouse Books.
ODonnell, N. 2011. The Life and Work of Street Photographer Vivian Maier. Chicago
Magazine, January 2011.
Whelan, R. 1995. Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown.