VIVIAN MAIER

[Alan Edward Klein]

Like many of us here, Vivan Maier obviously liked using nice cameras, had an exceptional eye for composition, enjoyed the thrill of capturing meaningful candid photos and even occasionally considered exhibiting her work... but it's her many mirror and shadow selfies that seem especially significant to me.

Vivian was apparently a self-referenced loner who had a powerful emotional need to document her presence amongst the people and places she encountered daily, with a minimum of personal interaction. Maier seemingly had no great need to share her photos with anybody but herself. The many rolls of film she left undeveloped hint that the actual recording of physical images might have often been secondary to the conscious act of marking the precise moment of any significant scene with a click of the shutter.

The twin-lens reflex camera was particularly well suited to the avoidance of eye contact with her subjects, so perhaps there were some autistic aspects to her personality. Indeed, if Vivian had been born in a different time and place she might never have even felt the need to take all those photographs. Imagine... if prescription drugs or behavioral therapy had supplanted the self-medication afforded to Vivian Maier by her Rolleiflex, John Maloof would have opened those storage lockers in Chicago to find little more than meaningless piles of hoarded junk, newspapers and magazines.

How does that differ from the billions of selfies people take every day? How about women who constantly check themselves in the mirror, makeup, hair, etc? Men too? Vanity doesn't seem to be considered a mental defect today. I suppose she would have posted a lot of hers on Facebook, Flickr, and here if she had a chance and money to develop more of her pictures. Loads of people take shots and never bother. I post mine. But haven't been discovered yet.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Would that make it more appealing than the fact that she was still alive when they took her stuff.
She allegedly slipped on frozen concrete path and hit her head and died a few weeks afterwards from a brain hemorrhage. If she wasnt so depressed about losing all her stuff she might of not slipped on the concrete lived on and opened a Instagram account and had 100 thousand followers.
More importantly what would of happened if they tracked her down while she was still alive (wouldn't been hard they knew her name and new the storage place) and she told them to go to hell and give her stuff back. As far as Im aware they only tried to find her when they realized they needed copy right to reproduce her work.....but it makes everyone feel better to think of her as a feeble minded Mary Poppins character who secretly dreamed of one day being famous.....like we all do

Curious. If you post your photos in the cloud, and then die and your heirs don't pay the monthly fee, does the cloud company own your work?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Legally, she forfeited her claim to her goods when she failed to keep up payment on the storage locker. That allowed them to sell the contents and the buyer was then free to resell or use any of it. That meant any original prints were fair to sell without any compensation for her. Reproduction, as you already said, was subject to copyright law. But, yes, her right to keep that particular stuff private did blow away when she stopped paying. It's something she agreed to when she rented the place.

I'm not sure copyright protection ends. I know that the purchaser of the storage locker contents was sued by a supposed relative who claimed the copyright belongs to him. I believe if I recall correctly, that he was not a real relative so his claim was thrown out. But that does raise the question of what happens to the copyright in these cases if there are relatives?

 

[Pieter12]

I'm not sure copyright protection ends

It sure does. But does the sale of a negative include the copyright? So, if a wedding photographer gives the negatives to the client and the client makes reprints, is he or she violating the photographer's copyright? In Ms. Maier's case, by not paying rent, she surrendered the contents of her locker/unit to the storage company who in turn sold them. I would assume the possession of the negative would include the ownership of the copyright. Otherwise, what value does either have? The negative owner could not make a print and sell it, and the copyright owner would not have access to the negative in order to make a print and sell it.

 

[cowanw]

No; possession of the negative does not infer ownership of the copyright. And the conflict that you point out in your last sentence is exactly the source of conflict. I understand the cousins in question have largely been paid an agreed on sum at least in portion as there are several owners of the negatives, who would each need to settle in some way if they wish to publish for profit.

 

[cowanw]

And it depends on where you publish and sell. In Canada, if the image predates 1949, it is in the public domain; after 1949 it gets more complicated.

 

[Don_ih]

Maier's copyright did not die when she did. Even though the negatives became the possession of someone else, that person rightfully should have had permission from Maier's estate to publish them, reproduce them, or use them for commercial purposes. Selling the negatives outright would be fine, selling prints that were in the locker would be fine. Selling any possessions from the locker would be fine.
@awty said does her right to privacy end when she dies? It certainly does, unless she has an estate that can maintain that privacy after her death. There was no estate until after she became a public property (a famous person) and her privacy went toward selling books.

 

[awty]

Did you guys watch the movie.?
Some people seem to think the guy bought the neg, took them home, saw they were Genius and Super Valuable, and then had a book and a world tour the next day.

Maloof bought TONS of "Stuff" from the storage locker.
He bought the negs for a project.
He was told the negs were all from one photographer named Vivian Maier.
He did a search on Google and found NOTHING a bout her
A quick look showed there was nothing that suited his purpose, so he tossed the negs in a closet.

Much later............He got back into the box of negs again, posted a few on My Space, or wherever he put them, and he got A LOT of favorable comments.
So he searched Google AGAIN, and found ONE Reference to Vivian Maier............it was her obituary.

When you default on your storage fees, and at that point Vivian was NOT the person paying the fees, the business has the legal right to sell your stuff in an effort to recoup their loss.
Whatever is in that storage locker becomes the property of whoever buys it.

There was a "Law Suit"....maybe more than one...........and my understanding is that the court (ultimately) ruled in favor of Maloof.
He now owns the negs, photos, hats, pieces of note paper, costume jewelry, hairpins, false teeth, cardboard rolls from toilet paper, ballpoint pens with no ink, receipts for miscellaneous items and anything else that Vivian had stored.

This is not what happened.
Maloof made the movie for his own purpose.
There wasn't one locker, there was a few. The person who bought them new that there was value in old photos and negatives so he made several bundles to sell to people who he new bought these. A lot of her personal items, letters and papers and other stuff of no value was thrown away. Maloof was a late player and initially only had a relatively small proportion. Someone else who had bought one of the bundles thought he had the right of copyright was challenged in court and loses. Then sold his share in smaller bundles to buyers through out the world. Maloof has since bought up other bundles and bits he could find.
Maloof doesn't have copyright it now belongs to the state until they can find an heir, if there is one. Meanwhile Maloof and the State have come to a financial agreement which allows them to be displayed in galleries for profit.
Don't know why you would use Google to find an old lady, wouldn't it be easier just to go to the storage place and ask there.
There was a BBC documentary that interviewed lots of people involved in the buying and selling of her work as well as interviews from people who new her. Remember she only died in 2009 and her lockers were bought in 2007. Some reason I can't find it any more, was on YouTube but seems to have gone. There's also several books being written.
If people want to see her work they should be able in the correct context of what really happened and her history.

 

[awty]

I’ve watched a documentary about her, some time ago, she was no feeble minded Mary Poppins. Hell no, she was a strong opinionated woman with character and authority, the kind of person that, when she is talking to you, you sit down and listen. Also, was very protective of her privacy, she didn’t like intruders, and I’m certain she’d be very upset that her pictures are all over the internet. She didn’t want no fame nor recognition, she wanted to left alone.

Yes I watched the BBC documentary and that the impression I got, was very sad. There are supposedly over 100 thousand negatives be great to see in that context. The galleries seem to like the Mary Poppins version.

 

[Pieter12]

If people want to see her work they should be able in the correct context of what really happened and her history.

I am not sure how viewing the work is impacted by the legal battles involved nor how the images came to be printed and put on display. That is a side story. Tell me one of her images that changes in meaning, viewing experience or emotional value because of that. The sale of those images, however, is a bit tainted by the history, but they wouldn't be available for sale or exhibition if Maloof and others hadn't done what they did. The negatives and unprocessed film would most probably be in a landfill.

 

[MattKing]

IMHO.........it would be helpful if you would give us the high-lights of your opinion on this.

It is not the first time i have heard disparaging Copyright "Accusations" aimed at Maloof.
But this IS the first time i have been able to ask somebody (and an attorney) why they feel that way.

If you know, you can also tell us if this matter (right or wrong) has been settled.
Thank You

First, I am now retired from the practice of law, so don't think of me as a lawyer (we are not called attorneys up here) but rather someone who has some training and experience in this stuff - particularly the estate issues.
Copyright itself is a legally enforceable right which can be used to make some money, if people are willing to pay you for copies of something to which copyright attaches.
Creating photographs - both negatives and prints - creates a copyright interest. In most cases, and certainly in the case of Vivian Maier, those copyright interests belonged to the photographer during her life.
Ownership of negatives or prints is separate from ownership of the copyright interests related to those negatives or prints. You can buy and sell negatives and prints, but if you make prints from those negatives or copy those prints, you can't sell or publish those prints or copies made by you unless you also own the copyright interests associated with them.
When Vivian Maier died, her ownership interest in the copyright interests in her photography didn't disappear. Instead, those interests immediately vested into her estate, which itself is a legal entity. And that is where the problems arise, because what do you do with an estate where no one is named in a Will as executor.
With no Will involved, you have what is known as an intestacy, and there are well defined rules about how you deal with an intestacy. The courts with jurisdiction in Probate have the responsibility and authority, and they oversee who is appointed to administer the estate, who is entitled to be given notice, what steps are taken to protect the estate, and eventually who is entitled to a share in the estate and how and when they become entitled to receive that share.
John Maloof had a problem. He had and owned a bunch of the things that had once belonged to Vivian Maier (including negatives) but the estate still owned the rights to publish her photos. He was in no way entitled to share in the copyrights and other assets in the estate - the laws relating to who inherit from a deceased person`s intestacy determine that - and he therefore had no standing to make application to the Probate Court for an order that would give someone the powers of an administrator, who could then in turn sell or license the copyright to the photos.
So he tried to do an end run around the ``technicalities``. He identified a single distant relative who could very well be one of the people entitled to a share in the estate (and might in the end be determined to be the only person entitled) but rather than going through the process of aiding that person in making the necessary application to the Probate Court to be named administrator, he made a deal with that person and then began dealing with the copyright interests in the same way as if the Probate Court had done their work and named the distant relative as the sole person entitled to the entire estate. So he monetized something he didn`t own, and dealt with the proceeds in a way that excluded any other distant relatives who might have had more of an interest, the same interest or less of an interest in any share. There were others as well who also monetized copies without any right to the copyright.
Maloof and those others were in many ways the ones who deserve credit for there being something worth money coming out of the estate. But that doesn`t mean that the estate shouldn`t be handled according to the law.
Estates like Vivian Maier`s are messy things, dealing with them is slow and expensive and can be frustrating, and the results can end up being unfair. But the rules for dealing with people who die without a Will make at least some sort of sense - particularly because they do their best to preserve assets and prevent them from going to the government. Avoiding the rules that apply because they are slow, inconvenient, expensive and because their result is both uncertain and may not lead to you being able to make the money you want to make isn`t something I support.
It is the ``end run`` around the responsibilities of the Probate Court and the interests of other potential but not yet identified intestate beneficiaries that bothers me. If Maloof and anyone else who owned the negatives had proceeded properly, I would applaud them for the value of what they bring to the estate.

 

[CMoore]

[QUOTE="awty, post: 2459704, member: 80061"
Maloof doesn't have copyright it now belongs to the state until they can find an heir, if there is one. Meanwhile Maloof and the State have come to a financial agreement which allows them to be displayed in galleries for profit.
Don't know why you would use Google to find an old lady, wouldn't it be easier just to go to the storage place and ask there.
[/QUOTE]
He was not looking for an "Old Lady".
He did not know who she was. He was told "The Photographers Name" was Vivian Maier.
So he looked on the internet for the name of a photographer called Vivian Maier.
Nothing came up.

Later he DID discover old receipts (and mail.?) that had the name and address of the person(s) she worked for. He started to contact those people and the story started to unravel right as Vivian died.

Vivian was not paying the storage fees when her stuff was auctioned.
It was her past employer..... or their kids.?

I would HOPE that if somebody went to a business and tried to find personal info about a customer (would you want then to) the business would say No.

I have no opinion on Maloof.
Whatever the courts decide is right and legal is fine by me.

 

[CMoore]

First, I am now retired from the practice of law, so don't think of me as a lawyer (we are not called attorneys up here) but rather someone who has some training and experience in this stuff - particularly the estate issues.
Copyright itself is a legally enforceable right which can be used to make some money, if people are willing to pay you for copies of something to which copyright attaches.
Creating photographs - both negatives and prints - creates a copyright interest. In most cases, and certainly in the case of Vivian Maier, those copyright interests belonged to the photographer during her life.
Ownership of negatives or prints is separate from ownership of the copyright interests related to those negatives or prints. You can buy and sell negatives and prints, but if you make prints from those negatives or copy those prints, you can't sell or publish those prints or copies made by you unless you also own the copyright interests associated with them.
When Vivian Maier died, her ownership interest in the copyright interests in her photography didn't disappear. Instead, those interests immediately vested into her estate, which itself is a legal entity. And that is where the problems arise, because what do you do with an estate where no one is named in a Will as executor.
With no Will involved, you have what is known as an intestacy, and there are well defined rules about how you deal with an intestacy. The courts with jurisdiction in Probate have the responsibility and authority, and they oversee who is appointed to administer the estate, who is entitled to be given notice, what steps are taken to protect the estate, and eventually who is entitled to a share in the estate and how and when they become entitled to receive that share.
John Maloof had a problem. He had and owned a bunch of the things that had once belonged to Vivian Maier (including negatives) but the estate still owned the rights to publish her photos. He was in no way entitled to share in the copyrights and other assets in the estate - the laws relating to who inherit from a deceased person`s intestacy determine that - and he therefore had no standing to make application to the Probate Court for an order that would give someone the powers of an administrator, who could then in turn sell or license the copyright to the photos.
So he tried to do an end run around the ``technicalities``. He identified a single distant relative who could very well be one of the people entitled to a share in the estate (and might in the end be determined to be the only person entitled) but rather than going through the process of aiding that person in making the necessary application to the Probate Court to be named administrator, he made a deal with that person and then began dealing with the copyright interests in the same way as if the Probate Court had done their work and named the distant relative as the sole person entitled to the entire estate. So he monetized something he didn`t own, and dealt with the proceeds in a way that excluded any other distant relatives who might have had more of an interest, the same interest or less of an interest in any share. There were others as well who also monetized copies without any right to the copyright.
Maloof and those others were in many ways the ones who deserve credit for there being something worth money coming out of the estate. But that doesn`t mean that the estate shouldn`t be handled according to the law.
Estates like Vivian Maier`s are messy things, dealing with them is slow and expensive and can be frustrating, and the results can end up being unfair. But the rules for dealing with people who die without a Will make at least some sort of sense - particularly because they do their best to preserve assets and prevent them from going to the government. Avoiding the rules that apply because they are slow, inconvenient, expensive and because their result is both uncertain and may not lead to you being able to make the money you want to make isn`t something I support.
It is the ``end run`` around the responsibilities of the Probate Court and the interests of other potential but not yet identified intestate beneficiaries that bothers me. If Maloof and anyone else who owned the negatives had proceeded properly, I would applaud them for the value of what they bring to the estate.

Thanks for the info.
Very enlightening.

Our daughter is going through a VERY Messy inheritance. And that is from her Grandfather, who she saw several time s a year, and had a Trust.
Two YEARS and the trust has not been......administered, settled, executed.?............whatever the correct term is.

So i can imagine with a person like Vivian, who was very private and disconnected from her family, and no Will/Trust........the process to determine who owns what might take many years.
It is a shame really.
Hopefully "The Right Thing" will prevail.
That is not always the case.

Thanks Again

 

[Pieter12]

On several occasions I stumbled upon Instagrams filled with truly unique and interesting work done with smart phones. Just like VM, the owners of those accounts probably don't think of themselves as serious photographers and have absolutely unrelated and often unremarkable careers in other fields. I wish I bookmarked them...

Ms. Maier shot with Rolleiflex 3.5T, Rolleiflex 3.5F, Rolleiflex 2.8C, Rolleiflex Automat and others. She later also used a Leica IIIc, an Ihagee Exakta, a Zeiss Contarex and various other SLR cameras. As well as a movie camera. It does not seem like someone who didn't take photography seriously.

 

[awty]

So If she had kept up the payments on her storage until she died, she still would be unknown. Unless her estate or storage unit contents were sold and possibly bought by someone who recognized there might be some value to them. If she had never made any attempts to promote herself up to the point when she forfeited her storage contents during her life, why would you think things would have turned out differntly for her?

I am not sure how viewing the work is impacted by the legal battles involved nor how the images came to be printed and put on display. That is a side story. Tell me one of her images that changes in meaning, viewing experience or emotional value because of that. The sale of those images, however, is a bit tainted by the history, but they wouldn't be available for sale or exhibition if Maloof and others hadn't done what they did. The negatives and unprocessed film would most probably be in a landfill.

The ends doesnt always justify the means.
There are supposed to be 100 000 pictures including moving pictures and photographs as well as undeveloped negatives, how many have you seen? a few hundred, a thousand or so at the most. With the sheer scale of work the fact that there are a lot of people who personally knew her still alive and have vivid memories of her would make a relatively easy job for a descent historian to piece together her life and give meaning to what she was on about. Is that hard to expect, apposed to a largely vague persona made by those who wish to profit from her work.
The fact that many still believe in the myth I have a problem with. If you consider she's an artist and her pictures have meaning, shouldn't we at least try to work out what's her meaning, its most likely she had one or many.
The stuff that happened after she defaulted on her units is intriguing, but I at least I agree with you its probably good they weren't tossed out, others might disagree.

 

[Pieter12]

The ends doesnt always justify the means.
There are supposed to be 100 000 pictures including moving pictures and photographs as well as undeveloped negatives, how many have you seen? a few hundred, a thousand or so at the most. With the sheer scale of work the fact that there are a lot of people who personally knew her still alive and have vivid memories of her would make a relatively easy job for a descent historian to piece together her life and give meaning to what she was on about. Is that hard to expect, apposed to a largely vague persona made by those who wish to profit from her work.
The fact that many still believe in the myth I have a problem with. If you consider she's an artist and her pictures have meaning, shouldn't we at least try to work out what's her meaning, its most likely she had one or many.
The stuff that happened after she defaulted on her units is intriguing, but I at least I agree with you its probably good they weren't tossed out, others might disagree.

Personally, although I might be curious about an artist's life, mostly I care about the work. For me, the work must stand on its own--the only context I might care about is the era and rough location. And many, many artists are not very appealing as people.

 

[Pieter12]

Sorry to crush your bubble, Pieter, but the 2021 equivalent of "Rolleiflex 3.5T, Rolleiflex 3.5F, Rolleiflex 2.8C, Rolleiflex Automat" is an iPhone. It takes skill to beat an iPhone with a dedicated photo camera (film or digital). 90% of photos uploaded to Photrio galleries don't hit that mark.

Really? There were that many folks with Rolleiflexes hanging from their necks? Where's yours, and your mother's, and your uncle's?

 

[MattKing]

Rolleiflexes are wonderful cameras.
But for arm's length selphys? Nah!

 

[Pieter12]

@Pieter12 I firmly believe that one of those not-yet-discovered geniuses is my wife. She's a far better photographer than I am. Her best work eclipses anything I've seen uploaded to this site, with the possible exception of NB23 (but her style is very different). She gifted me her entire EOS kit after iPhone became good enough. But she also super private, doesn't consider herself a photographer, doesn't have an instagram and doesn't allow me to share her pictures. She says that iPhone gives her more than Canon 5D Mk4 with $15k worth of lenses. So yeah, smart phones in 2021 is what Rolleiflex was in the 60s.

Kudos to your wife. And she has every right to keep the images to herself for as long as she's around. But your comparison of the Rollei to an iPhone still makes no sense. Neither in popularity/number of them in use, demographics or relative cost and availability. The iPhone of that era was the Instamatic and earlier, the Brownie.

 

[MattKing]

Rolleiflexes were never common or all that affordable, and for most of their heyday people didn't have easy access to credit.
iPhones aren't affordable if you pay cash, but most are easily financed, so they are ubiquitous.
I agree that the Brownie or Instamatic are a much better comparison.

 

[awty]

Personally, although I might be curious about an artist's life, mostly I care about the work. For me, the work must stand on its own--the only context I might care about is the era and rough location. And many, many artists are not very appealing as people.

Some people feel threatened by strong minded independent women.

 

[Helge]

Everything I say makes perfect sense. Just write it down and come back to your notes frequently. It will get in there eventually.

Show some stuff, or shut up.
Your hand wavy, crypto preachy, virtue signaling and humble bragging posts in this thread, are too transparent as what they are.

VM had a special talent and personality and she lived in different times. Nothing remotely like her would be possible today.
She’s was at the same time supported and worked against her circumstances and the zeitgeist.

Likewise, a modern equivalent of a Rolleiflex would be impossible to find.
The kind of dedication and determination it would take for a nanny to buy a Rolleiflex new in the fifties, is something completely different from an iPhone.

I’d love to see and hear her audio recordings and movies too.
In some way the best analogy for one of her type today, would be an idiosyncratic and artistic youtuber.
But then, few (none?) show the perseverance and deep, yet broad interest in artful documentation and juxtaposition she shows.

 

[Don_ih]

A modern smartphone is a marvelous picture taking machine, representing 95% of what's possible with today's picture making technology.

There's way more to good photography than clarity and sharpness. A smart phone gives you zero choices about focus and lens choice and flattens the content of the image. Also, a lot of what you see on Instagram in the way of good photography is probably taken with something like a Sony A7iii. If there's a digital modern equivalent to what the Rolleiflex was at its time, it would be something like that: very expensive and not seen in every thirteen-year-old's hand.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

Sorry to crush your bubble, Pieter, but the 2021 equivalent of "Rolleiflex 3.5T, Rolleiflex 3.5F, Rolleiflex 2.8C, Rolleiflex Automat" is an iPhone. It takes skill to beat an iPhone with a dedicated photo camera (film or digital). 90% of photos uploaded to Photrio galleries don't hit that mark.

[EDIT] What I am saying is that algorithms are better than most photographers are at developing, scanning and post-processing. I also firmly believe they're better at picking subjects, framing & cropping, but that hasn't been implemented in a product I can point a finger at. Yet.

[EDIT-2] The conclusion to make here is that today's undiscovered talents are those who harness the power of algorithms, rely on them heavily, and focus their creative energy on what's beyond.

Technically excellent doesn't equal good photograph. Only well exposed.

 

[Pieter12]

@MartinCrabtree @Don Heisz 100% agree with you. What I meant to say was that taking advantage of these capabilities allows present day undiscovered Vivians to push the creative envelope. And that's exactly why an iPhone is today's Rolleiflex in this context.

Why do you think the Rolleiflex was as common or as easy to use as a smartphone? A Leica might be a better comparison if you go by size and convenience, but even then such sophisticated cameras were not automatic and as easy to use, nor as ubiquitous as today's phones. A photo taken with a phone is immediately visible, no further expense or effort is needed, whereas a film camera requires the added expense and time of buying, processing film and printing (except reversal film) in order to see the results. Point is, the ownership of a Rolleiflex was an expensive proposition, made for the sole purpose of taking photos by a serious amateur or professional. The fact that one can use a smart phone to make pictures is icing on the cake, an added benefit of a communications device that one happens to have on hand almost all of the time.