In her new novel, Christina Hesselholdt delves into the world of the enigmatic American photographer, Vivian Maier (1926-2009), whose unique photographic body of work only reached the public by chance. On the surface, Vivian Maier lived a quiet life as a loving, firm and feisty nanny for wealthy families in Chicago and New York. But throughout four decades, she took more than 150,000 photos, mainly with Rollieflex cameras. The pictures were only discovered in an auction shortly before she died, impoverished and feasibly very lonely. In a time when self-obsession and representation are at an all-time high, Vivian Maier holds a particular fascination. Who was this eccentric person? And why did she not try to make a living from her art? In Vivian, a chorus of voices, including Vivian's own, address these questions. We watch Vivian grow up in a severely dysfunctional family in New York and Champsaur in France, and we follow her as a nanny in Chicago and as a photographer on the streets of these American cities and in rural France. The novel comprises multiple voices: Vivian's, her mother's, one of the children she looked after and her parents. And crucially, the voice of the inquisitive narrator, who pulls the threads together and asks Vivian prying questions.
Industry Reviews
"'Vivian is a fascinating, ingeniously constructed piece of documentary fiction. The novel's short sections illuminate Vivian Maier in brilliant flashes without ever dispelling her singular mystery.' - Adam Foulds, author of Dream Sequence
'Christina Hesselholdt transposes one of the greatest enigmas of twentieth century photography, Vivian Maier, with a synaesthetic delicacy. Part eerie acapella of confessions, part hoarder's clippings come to life, Hesselholdt's exceptional work on the life of Vivian Maier is as rare and roguish as the artist herself.' - Yelena Moskovich, author of Virtuoso
'Like its protagonist, this ambling story relishes the connective, startling minutiae of the commonplace encounter. ... Out of Vivian's torrent of travel, homelife, and familial resentment, Hesselholdt provides flashes of odd loveliness.' - Zack Hatfield, ArtForum
'Only the second of Hesselholdt's works to be translated into English - adroitly so by Paul Russell Garrett - this fragmented, polyphonic novel plays with the enigma of its subject: ""Vivian"", ""Viv"", ""Vivienne"", ""Miss Maier"", ""Kiki"", ""V. Smith"", depending on the scene or her mood. ... Never sacrificing the opacity that makes Maier so fascinating, [Vivian] is as strange and mercurial as the inscrutable figure at its centre, and as prickly too. But then, as Hesselholdt has Vivian explain to one of her small charges, ""Art is not somewhere you feel comfortable.""' - Lucy Scholes, Financial Times
'Hesselholdt brings Maier to life, luminously: looking down into the viewfinder on the top of her Rolleiflex camera, seeing the image for the first and last time.' - Tom Overton, frieze
'Vivian is less than two hundred pages long, but it is filled to the brim with memories and suppositions. Christina Hesselholdt wonderfully illustrates Vivian Maier's complex persona through a multitude of voices demanding to be heard.' - Laila Obeidat, London Magazine"
