i finally looked at vivian maier with the aid of the film finding vivian maier by the fellow who found the cache of her images of a lifetime. and i am blown away. 
i think at first i thought it was just an intriguing story, that the story of an eccentric 
nanny who took pictures and secreted them in a series of upper rooms was more interesting than the pictures. and you can't see the life without the pictures 
or the pictures without the life now. 
if i had seen the pictures first, if i had found vivian that way, i hope that i would have known her, and seen that she was a nanny living in art. in other peoples' houses she nested her private gleanings of the world she saw that is rarely recorded and rarely seen.
having seen the pictures through the aperture opened on her secretive life, i see that she was a fierce and tender observer. 
initially, as with henry darger, i got this feeling of intense and claustrophobic sadness, but as with darger, a whole world comes out of that inwardness, and in maier's pictures is shown, along with her intimate sadness the inscrutable sadness of the world, and the violence, 
the hurt, the love, the tenderness. 
now the life becomes more intriguing, now life becomes more, and that is the truest meaning to be found. the images of a lifetime within and without.


(the top picture i found in the arcade under the train. the bottom one i got in my little camera on this morning's walk.)