Thank you, John Maloof, for collecting Ms. Maier's work, making it available to the public, and compiling information about her for this documentary.With regards to her work itself, I would give it a 10 out of 10. In my opinion she was a better photographer than Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, and Steve McCurry, other photographers who took portraits. Just do a Google image search with her name. Wow. The things that make her work stand out are the purity of the art, the lack of self consciousness, the art for art's sake feel that immediately takes you to the subject and the story and does not draw attention to the artist herself, the prolificacy of the body of work. It spoke immediately to my heart. I have never encountered a better photographer. The fact that she remains relatively obscure is unfair, but I have a feeling she wouldn't mind. I think she did it all for the sake of the art itself and nothing more, not money, not fame, not attention or admiration from others. This approach to the work shows itself in the result. No other way to approach the art would have generated an equivalent result.The reason I give the film 7 out of 10 stars is that I feel that the film views her from a bit of a condescending point of view because of some of the ways in which she was eccentric and self effacing, but I won't go into details lest I generate spoilers. I wish everyone who is into photography would check her out. She deserves more credit than she is getting, not that I think she would have cared, but it is the world that loses out if it doesn't pay more attention to her work.

An unknown street photographer pops onto the scene posthumously, changing the landscape of the art form, Finding Vivian Maier is that story. Finding Vivan Maier is a documentary about the reclusive and mysterious woman who devoted her life to taking photography, and yet, never let any of it be seen. Written and directed by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel, Finding Vivan Maier tells of John Maloof's journey to discover this odd woman's life and to ensure her legacy is remembered. The documentary is sure to be a hit amongst avid photographers and lovers of photography as an art form. In that regard it is quite compelling, especially due to enigmatic nature of its subject, Vivian Maier. However, due to its limited scope it does not have an overreaching ability to captivate mass audiences that would otherwise show little interest in the material. Finding Vivian Maier is significantly aided in its successfulness by the bizarre personality of this prolific but, until now, unrecognized artist. As the documentary progresses, we follow along with John Maloof as he utilizes various means to unearth this woman's background and nature, a feat made increasingly difficult by her reclusive and private character. Of course, an artist being secretive is not unusual, but being the first to explore it still yields a fascinating and intriguing documentary. We do so through the now grown children she nannied for and a very limited circle of friends. Omitted from the documentary are interviews with those members of the art world that still fail to acknowledge Vivian Maier as a distinguishable photographer, and it certainly is a missed opportunity. As certain individuals within the documentary state, perhaps the mystery of her is more interesting than the work itself. But this obscured and even troubled woman left an unusual trail of breadcrumbs in the forms of unpublished photo negatives as evidence for us, and the producers of the film Finding Vivian Maier, to construct an understanding of this riveting individual. Ultimately, it is nice that the documentary can be another vehicle to get her work out there to garner further appreciation and recognition from the industry.

I was so looking forward to watching this documentary. I love biographies and fell in love with her photography after watching a PBS special about her a couple of years ago. Instead of trying to capture what little is known of her life and work, this movie turned into a posthumous roast. So she was eccentric, big deal, so are a lot of other artists. Did the movie have to focus on that? Does it have to diminish her work? And the accounts from the children Maier cared for. Many of them seemed to be a little off themselves. I feel this part of her story was sensationalized just to make for a better story because there is very little that is known about her. I agree with a previous poster that stated Maloof should have kept himself out and just offered a narrative. At times I felt he was trying to make it more about him than anything else. I must say I did enjoy when he traveled to France in search of her relatives. That was was interesting and relative to the story. I wished they would have spoken to more people like the gentlemen in the beginning who talked about the type of camera she used and his theory on why she probably liked working with it. Fascinating stuff that was overshadowed by talk of how kookoo she was. Still definitely worth watching, but I think the PBS special they aired a while back was much better and talked about what really matters, her photography.

After all the hype surrounding this film (and the Oscar nomination), I thought there might be a reason for it. But unfortunately, I didn't get it. I didn't see much that impressed me about the subject, the filmmaker (who was way too present) or the so-called "mystery" of why we really need to have a history of every aspect of Vivian's life.So what if she was a Nanny? Big deal. So what if she never had a showing during her lifetime? So do most artists who die penniless. I think there is so much emphasis on how brilliant she was, that it was difficult to see what the pictures are all about: they are simple depictions of the world as seen through one woman's eyes. So therefore, it didn't matter one bit that she was not a recognized artist during her lifetime.The constant interruption of the images by the filmmaker emoting in front of the camera is grating, and the repeated shots of him developing and printing, is annoying to say the least. All of it went way too far in making him seem like he was some kind of a savior who gave the world a gift -- and ignores the fact that Vivian was the kind of artist who only wanted to practice her art without all the hoopla and celebrity that follows most of the pretentious egocentric photographers like Annie Leibowitz or Cindy Sherman -- where the personality of the photographer becomes more important than the images themselves. At least Vivian didn't proclaim how brilliant she was, and expect everyone to reward her.In all honesty, I failed to see any real innovation in terms of photography. Almost every image was almost like a direct analogy to Diane Arbus, who frankly did it better. Vivian was a good photographer, no question. But what bothers me is the ludicrous hype that has now grown up around the images -- and it all seems unwarranted. There is nothing about this documentary that suggests it should be nominated for an Oscar, and was, in my opinion, a waste of time.