Marie
When Vivian Maier Photographed My Family in the French Alps
I only had one photo of my grandmother when she was young.
It was formal. Posed. The kind of photo you take when you get engaged - my grandmother Madeleine standing with my grandfather, both of them dressed up, looking at the camera the way people did in those days. Stiff. Proper. Beautiful, but not alive.
And then I discovered that Vivian Maier had photographed her.
Who Was Vivian Maier?
If you don't know Vivian Maier's story, it's one of the most remarkable in photography history.
She was a nanny. For decades, she worked for families in New York and Chicago, taking care of their children. And in her spare time, she walked the streets with a Rolleiflex camera, capturing thousands and thousands of images - street scenes, portraits, everyday moments that revealed something deeper about humanity.
Nobody knew.
She never showed her work. Never tried to get published. Never sold a single print. She just... photographed. Obsessively. Brilliantly.
When she died in 2009, her storage locker was auctioned off to pay her debts. Inside were over 100,000 negatives. A historian named John Maloof bought a box of them for $380, developed them, and realized he'd stumbled onto the work of a genius.
The photos were extraordinary. Raw, honest, beautifully composed black and white images of mid-century American life. Vivian Maier became famous posthumously - and now her work is in museums around the world.
I love her black and white series. The way she captured people being people - not performing for the camera, just existing in their ordinary lives.
How Did She End Up in Saint-Bonnet-En-Champsaur?
Saint-Bonnet-En-Champsaur is a tiny village in the French Alps. Population: small. Notable landmarks: fewer.
This is where my family is from. My grandparents owned a small grocery store there. They weren't wealthy, but my grandmother believed in dressing the family properly - nothing fancy, just good quality clothes that fit well. Pride in how you presented yourself, even in a village where everyone knew everyone.
In 1959, Vivian Maier traveled to France. She was working as a nanny for a family, and they brought her along on their trip. Somehow - and I still don't know exactly how this happened - she ended up in Saint-Bonnet-En-Champsaur.
What are the chances?
And while she was there, she photographed my grandmother Madeleine and my uncle Jean-Louis.
The Photos
Vivian didn't just take one or two photos in Saint-Bonnet - she captured multiple moments of my family that day.
The first photo is my uncle Jean-Louis as a little boy. He's maybe four or five years old, wearing a dark sweater and striped shorts, hands up mid-gesture, grinning at the camera with pure, unselfconscious joy. His expression is so alive - the kind of moment that only lasts a fraction of a second before a kid moves on to the next thing.
That's the magic of Vivian's work. She didn't ask people to pose. She caught them being.
The second photo is my grandmother Madeleine, sitting outside with Mirou on her lap.
Mirou was the family's favorite dog. Ever. My grandmother talked about that dog my entire childhood - how smart she was, how well-behaved, how special. My grandmother didn't normally hold dogs on her lap. She wasn't that kind of person. But Mirou was the exception.
And there she is in this photo - Madeleine, young and beautiful, holding Mirou gently, looking off to the side with this soft, natural expression. She's not performing. She's just... there. A moment in time, preserved.
The third photo shows all three siblings together - my uncle Jean-Louis with his two sisters. And in the middle of this everyday moment outside their home, there's a spontaneous kiss. Pure, unguarded affection. This is what Vivian was brilliant at - not the formal family portrait, but the real moments of connection that happen when people forget the camera is there.
Looking at these photos now, I can see why Vivian Maier's work resonates so deeply with people. She wasn't photographing subjects - she was photographing lives. The texture of daily existence. The small moments that, decades later, become precious.
How We Discovered the Photos
Here's the thing: I didn't find these photos by digging through archives or contacting the Vivian Maier estate.
When her work was discovered and word got out that she'd photographed people in the French Alps during her 1959 trip, someone organized a big exhibition of those photos.
My uncle Jean-Louis went to see it.
And there he was. A little boy in striped shorts, grinning at the camera. And his mother, Madeleine, holding Mirou.
Can you imagine that moment? Walking into an exhibition by this now-famous photographer whose work was hidden for decades, and suddenly you're looking at yourself. At your mother. At the family dog you grew up hearing stories about.
It must have been surreal.
He recognized them immediately. Of course he did - that was his life, his family, his village, frozen in time by a stranger with a camera who nobody knew was creating art.
That's how we got these photos. Not because we were looking for them, but because Vivian Maier's hidden archive was finally brought into the light, and my family happened to be in it.
Why This Matters to Me
Like I said, I only had one photo of my grandmother when she was young - that formal engagement portrait. Lovely, but distant.
This photo of her with Mirou? It's her. The grandmother I knew. Warm. Present. Real.
And the fact that it was taken by Vivian Maier - this brilliant, mysterious photographer whose work wasn't discovered until after she died - makes it feel even more precious.
She walked through my family's tiny village in the French Alps in 1959, camera in hand, and captured something I would have never had otherwise: my grandmother, young and alive, holding the dog she loved most in the world.
I don't know if Vivian ever knew how important these photos would become - not just to the art world, but to a granddaughter in America decades later who finally got to see her grandmother as a person, not just a pose.
But I'm grateful she took them.
What Vivian Maier Taught Me
As a portrait photographer, Vivian's work reminds me why I do this.
The best portraits aren't the ones where everything is perfect. They're the ones where something real comes through. A moment of joy. A quiet connection with a beloved dog. The way someone looks when they've forgotten the camera is there.
That's what I'm always chasing in my own work - the moment when the person stops performing and just is.
Vivian Maier spent her life capturing those moments, and nobody even knew she was doing it.
Now her photos are everywhere, and one of them is of my grandmother.
What are the chances?