What I Watched -- Finding Vivian Maier

I was at the office one Sunday when CK asked me if I had ever heard of Vivian Maier.  "No, should I have?"  I had no idea what context to put this person in: client? fellow attorney? celebutante?  "I saw the most incredible documentary yesterday," he said.

He apparently had been flipping channels and happened upon it at a moment early in the film where the camera is mounted to the ceiling and you're looking down at the floor of a room while the documentarian was going about his business.  The interesting camera angle caught his attention, and the odd story kept it.  The film was Finding Vivian Maier.

Vivian Maier was a nanny.  And a photographer.  And strange.  And eventually mentally ill.  Her photographs are stunning compositions, mostly in black and one, generally with a human subject who often didn't know he or she was being photographed.

Often, Vivian would drag her charges along with her while she was photographing, and several of them are interviewed in the film, discussing both their expeditions and day trips, and the woman who took them, sometimes used assumed names, and lied about her birthplace.

Bottom line: a fascinating look at a confused and confusing woman.