Ann Marks's passion for genealogical research and solving mysteries is on full display in Vivian Maier Developed, an analytical, thoroughly researched biography of an enigmatic photographer who was never afforded an audience for her work during her lifetime.
Vivian Maier, an American of French/German extraction, was a free spirit who came from a lineage plagued with challenges--mental illness, bigamy, poverty, substance abuse. Neglected and shunned by her family, Maier--solitary and morbidly private--carved out a life of her own. Employed as a nanny and caretaker, she dutifully tended to her charges while pursuing photography, mostly street photography, as a fine art. Marks makes the case that Maier was never able to secure the right connections to pursue a professional career. Therefore, she honed her craft in obscurity--leaving behind a massive body of work discovered only in 2007, two years before her death. When her storage lockers in Chicago went into arrears and were auctioned, a trove of 140,000 images and 45,000 undeveloped negatives were discovered. Through the efforts of one local photo dealer with a good eye and a keen business sense, Maier's unrecognized artistic genius was finally launched into the public.
With wisdom and respectful insight, Marks shares pivotal details of Maier's life--her many travels, those who crossed her path and what drove her artistic dedication--as well as nearly 400 of her photographs, reproduced in these pages. Drawing on documents and ephemera, along with hundreds of never-before-seen photographs from the Maier archive, Marks perceptively probes the emotional, psychological and intellectual depths that created and sustained one of photography's greatest masters. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines