The still unfolding legend of Vivian Maier has been one of photographic genius discovered only after a lifetime of shooting. Now hailed as a master of street photography, she spent most of her working life in obscurity as a nanny in New York, where she was born, and Chicago, where she died in 2009 at age 83.
薇薇安-迈尔的传奇故事仍在上演，她是一位摄影天才，在一生的拍摄生涯中才被发现。现在，她被誉为街头摄影大师，但她工作生涯的大部分时间都在默默无闻中度过，在纽约（她出生的地方）和芝加哥（她于 2009 年在芝加哥去世，享年 83 岁）当保姆。

In her later years, her oeuvre – more than 100,000 images – sat unseen in storage, along with much of her earthly possessions. When she was unable to keep up with the storage fees, they were auctioned off in 2007. After her death two years later, a collector who had bought one of the lots began to put her images online. Within weeks, she had a global following.
在她晚年，她的作品--超过 10 万张照片--和她的许多世俗财产一起被存放在仓库里，无人问津。当她无力支付存储费用时，这些作品于 2007 年被拍卖。两年后，在她去世后，一位收藏家买下了其中一幅作品，并开始将她的照片放到网上。几周之内，她就在全球范围内拥有了一批追随者。

The latest chapter in this endlessly fascinating tale is the publication this year of  “Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows,” by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams (CityFiles Press). The following essay is excerpted from that book, and photos came courtesy of the Jeffrey Goldstein Collection.
理查德-卡汉（Richard Cahan）和迈克尔-威廉姆斯（Michael Williams）合著的《薇薇安-迈尔：走出阴影》一书（CityFiles Press）于今年出版，为这个引人入胜的故事揭开了新的篇章。以下文章摘自该书，照片由杰弗里-戈尔茨坦收藏提供。

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It’s the end of the day. The TV has been flipped on. A small fire is tended in the backyard. The marquee of the Wilmette Theater is being changed over. Parents’ night at the local school is wrapping up. The children are asleep as Vivian Maier heads home with her camera by the glow of the streetlights.
一天结束了。电视已经打开。后院升起了小火。威尔米特剧院的招牌正在更换。当地学校的家长之夜即将结束。薇薇安-迈尔（Vivian Maier）在街灯的照耀下带着相机回家，孩子们已经睡着了。

Maier continued to document her life throughout the 1980s and 1990s. She shot Ektachrome, packing tens of thousands of the color transparencies into sleek yellow Kodak slide boxes. But her days with the Rolleiflex, with which she had taken her most personal and important photographs, were mostly over by the 1970s.
在整个 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代，迈尔一直在记录自己的生活。她拍摄 Ektachrome，将数以万计的彩色透明胶片装入光滑的黄色柯达幻灯片盒中。但是，她使用禄来福来相机拍摄最私人、最重要照片的日子，在 20 世纪 70 年代就已经结束了。

Work as a nanny continued. When Zalman and Karen Usiskin interviewed her to be their housekeeper and baby sitter in the 1980s, she announced: “I come with my life, and my life is in boxes.” Zalman told her that would not be a problem since they had extra room in the garage. “We had no idea how many boxes,” he later said.
保姆工作继续进行。20世纪80年代，当扎尔曼和卡伦-尤西斯金面试她 成为他们的管家和保姆时，她宣布："我是带着我的生活来的 而我的生活都装在箱子里"扎尔曼告诉她这不成问题，因为他们的车库里还有多余的空间。"他后来说："我们根本不知道有多少箱子。

Around 1990, Maier took a job caring for Chiara Baylaender, a teenage girl with severe developmental disabilities. Maier was good company for her: they played kick the can and amused themselves with pop beads. Maier dressed Chiara in mismatched clothes from the Salvation Army. “But it’s Pendleton,” Vivian told the girl’s sister when she protested. It didn’t matter. “My sister looked like a junior Vivian,” she recalled.
1990 年左右，迈尔接受了一份照顾奇亚拉-贝兰德（Chiara Baylaender）的工作，她是一名有严重发育障碍的少女。麦尔是她的好伙伴：她们一起玩踢罐子的游戏，用弹珠自娱自乐。Maier 给 Chiara 穿的衣服都是救世军提供的不配套的。"但这是彭德尔顿的衣服，"当女孩的姐姐提出抗议时，薇薇安对她说。这并不重要。"她回忆说："我妹妹看起来就像小薇薇安。

And Maier proved an uninterested housekeeper, too. “It’s just going to get dusty again,” she would say. Having filled the Baylaenders’ storage room, she piled her bedroom five feet deep with books, leaving only a narrow path to her bed. Then she covered that — and slept on the floor.
事实证明，麦尔也是一个不感兴趣的管家。"她会说："又要落满灰尘了。她把贝伦德家的储藏室塞得满满当当，又在自己的卧室里堆满了五英尺深的书，只留下一条窄窄的小路通向她的床。然后她盖上床铺，睡在地板上。

In the mid-1990s, Maier went to work as a caretaker for an older woman. After the woman moved to a nursing home in 1996, Maier stayed on in her Oak Park house for a couple of months to get it ready to sell. Maier made overtures about working for the family of the woman’s daughter, but she was not needed.
20 世纪 90 年代中期，迈尔去给一位老妇人当看护。1996 年，这位老妇人搬到养老院后，迈尔在她位于橡树园的房子里住了几个月，准备把房子卖掉。Maier 曾向这位老人的女儿家提出过工作邀请，但对方不需要她。

Over the years, leaving was never easy. Despite being close to these families, Maier was an outsider. During the late 1960s, she photographed the light coming from the homes she passed. Always looking in. At seventy, she was looking for work in North Chicago or Waukegan, almost an hour north of Chicago. With little saved and no family of her own, she was determined to keep living independently.
多年来，离开并不容易。尽管与这些家庭关系密切，但迈尔却是个局外人。在 20 世纪 60 年代末，她拍摄了从她经过的家庭中透出的光线。她总是向内看。七十岁那年，她在北芝加哥或沃基根（芝加哥以北近一小时车程的地方）找工作。她的积蓄不多，也没有自己的家庭，她决心继续独立生活。

Acquaintances recall Maier as an imposing, confident, stolid woman in her later years. Jim Dempsey, who worked the box office at the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute, saw her most every week for over a decade. She would dig through her purse looking for money, sighing until Dempsey let her in. She often stopped to talk — about movies, life, anything but herself — although he never got her name.
据熟人回忆，晚年的迈尔是一位威严、自信、坚毅的女性。在艺术学院电影中心售票处工作的吉姆-登普西（Jim Dempsey）十多年来每周都能见到她。她会翻钱包找钱，一直叹气，直到邓普西让她进去。她经常停下来聊天--关于电影、生活，除了她自己，什么都聊--尽管他从未知道她的名字。

Bindy Bitterman, who ran the antiques store Eureka in Evanston, knew Maier only as Miss V. Smith, the name she gave to hold an item. She was the only customer who ever bought Ken, a long-forgotten liberal magazine from the 1930s. Roger Carlson, who ran Bookman’s Alley nearby, knew her full name but was scolded when he introduced her to another customer by it. She visited his shop as late as 2005 and bought Life magazines, talked politics (“Her judgment was pretty harsh on everyone”), and agonized about how difficult it was to find work.
在埃文斯顿经营古董店尤里卡（Eureka）的宾迪-比特曼（Bindy Bitterman）只知道迈尔是 V. 史密斯小姐，这是她为了保存一件物品而起的名字。她是唯一一位买过 20 世纪 30 年代的自由主义杂志《肯》（Ken）的顾客。在附近经营 Bookman's Alley 的罗杰-卡尔森（Roger Carlson）知道她的全名，但当他用这个名字向另一位顾客介绍她时，却遭到了斥责。直到 2005 年，她还来他的店里买《生活》杂志，谈论政治（"她对每个人的评价都很苛刻"），并为找工作有多难而苦恼。

She was a fighter to the end, Carlson said.
卡尔森说，她是一个战斗到最后的人。

The boys who had thought of Vivian Maier as a second mother tried to keep track of her for years. They made overtures to help, but she resisted. She loved the Gensburgs and kept up with the family — going to weddings, graduations, baby showers — but it was hard for her to ask for help.
那些把薇薇安-迈尔当作第二个母亲的男孩们多年来一直试图跟踪她。他们主动提出帮忙，但她拒绝了。她很喜欢根斯伯格一家，并与他们保持着联系--参加婚礼、毕业典礼、婴儿派对--但她很难开口寻求帮助。

Because of her pride and her need for privacy, Maier remained elusive for years. When the Gensburgs found her, she was on the verge of being put out of a cheap apartment in the western suburb of Cicero. The brothers offered to rent a better apartment for her on Sheridan Road at the northern tip of Chicago, but they told her she needed to clean up her Cicero place before she left. She agreed, showed them the Clorox and rags, pulled up a chair, sat back with The New York Times, and told Lane to start with the walls and bathroom.
由于自尊心和对隐私的需求，迈尔多年来一直难以捉摸。当根斯伯格兄弟找到她时，她正濒临被赶出西塞罗西郊廉价公寓的边缘。兄弟俩提出在芝加哥北端的谢里登路（Sheridan Road）为她租一套更好的公寓，但他们告诉她，在离开西塞罗之前，她必须把那里收拾干净。她同意了，给他们看了克罗克和抹布，拉了把椅子坐下，拿着《纽约时报》，告诉莱恩从墙壁和浴室开始。

Even in her new apartment, Maier made it difficult for the family to keep track of her. The Gensburgs bought her a cellphone, but she refused to use it. So they just dropped by when they wanted to see her.
即使是在新公寓里，迈尔也让家人很难找到她。根斯伯格夫妇给她买了一部手机，但她拒绝使用。所以他们只是在想见她的时候顺便拜访一下。

In November 2008, Maier fell on the ice on Howard Street not far from her home and hit her head. She was taken, unconscious, by paramedics to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. When she came to, she refused to tell the emergency room staff what had happened and demanded to leave. Lane Gensburg was called. Doctors assured the family that she would recover, but she never did. For the next several months, she resisted eating and was barely responsive. Too weak to return to her apartment, Maier was transported in late January 2009 to a nursing home in Highland Park, where her health continued to decline. She died there on April 21, 2009.
2008 年 11 月，Maier 在离家不远的霍华德街（Howard Street）的冰面上摔倒，撞到了头部。她昏迷不醒，被医护人员送到埃文斯顿的圣弗朗西斯医院。当她醒过来时，她拒绝告诉急诊室的工作人员发生了什么事，并要求离开。Lane Gensburg 被叫来。医生向她的家人保证她会康复，但她始终没有康复。在接下来的几个月里，她拒绝进食，几乎没有任何反应。2009 年 1 月下旬，迈尔因身体虚弱无法返回公寓，被送往海兰帕克的一家疗养院，在那里她的健康状况持续恶化。2009 年 4 月 21 日，她在那里去世。

The Gensburgs had Vivian Maier cremated and scattered her ashes in a forest where she’d taken the boys fifty years earlier. They considered having a funeral but knew she would have abhorred such an observance. So they paid for a death notice in the Chicago Tribune: “Vivian Maier, proud native of France and Chicago resident for the last 50 years died peacefully on Monday. . . . A free and kindred spirit who magically touched the lives of all who knew her.”
根斯伯格夫妇将薇薇安-迈尔火化，并将她的骨灰撒在她五十年前带孩子们去的森林里。他们考虑过举行葬礼 但知道她会厌恶这种仪式于是他们花钱在《芝加哥论坛报》上刊登了一则死亡通知："薇薇安-迈尔，骄傲的法国人，过去 50 年的芝加哥居民，于周一安详逝世。. . ."她是一个自由而善良的灵魂" "她神奇地感动了所有认识她的人"

To the faithful Gensburgs, Vivian’s story had come to an end. To the world, it was only just beginning.
对于忠实的根斯伯格家族来说，薇薇安的故事已经结束。而对世人来说，故事才刚刚开始。

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