How did that time, broadly, living with families, taking care of children affect how she took photos and I guess what she took photos of? She was even nanny at one point to the TV personality Phil Donahue's children in Chicago after his divorce. GONYEA: As a young woman, Maier made a living as a nanny, working first in New York and in Los Angeles and particularly in Chicago. So that's why she wanted to walk away from her family and never look back. And from what we can tell, she was basically ignored. And this unstable mother was who raised Vivian. So she came to New York, married a man, Charles Maier, who was an alcoholic, a gambler and could be violent. And her mother was a very troubled person.
MARKS: Well, Vivian was mostly raised by her mother. GONYEA: The area of Vivian Maier's life we know the least about was her childhood. And then also, I was surprised that even with all the genealogists, no one could trace her family background at all.
MARKS: Well, what happened was I watched the documentary "Finding Vivian Maier." And, of course, I was taken in by her photographs, but it really seemed surprising to me that people described her in such different ways. What drove you to start to really unravel this story? One is called "Finding Vivian Maier." The other is "The Vivian Maier Mystery." They told the story, but you wanted to know more, not just about her photos but about her life. GONYEA: Two documentaries were released several years ago. But the amazing thing about that photograph is that Vivian took it from a bus. And then she's framed by the New York Library steps and pillars. MARKS: Well, actually, there's a picture of a woman in front of the New York Library, and she is very kind of elusive and mysterious, and she comes into the frame, like, as if she's sort of a Venus. Can you tell us about maybe just a couple of your favorite images and what they say about her style? GONYEA: So Maier is best known as a street photographer. Author Ann Marks spent years researching Maier's gifted but troubled life to write "Vivian Maier Developed: The Untold Story Of The Photographer Nanny." Ann Marks joins us now from New York City. Museum exhibits and two film documentaries followed. That's when the contents of her storage containers, more than 140,000 photographs and negatives, gained the attention of curators and critics.
But her genius did not come to light until after she died in 2009. Vivian Maier is considered one of the nation's greatest photographers of the 20th century.
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