When you read about lives well lived this must rank in the forefront. Vivian was a pioneer, bold, determined. The sheer grit you find in these pages will spur you to return to those long lost moments of pleasure to be found in the telling of this life, this woman , this icon.

An exhaustively researched biography of Vivian Maier provides much more information on the famously private street photographer. Although it's a bit long at points (there's almost as much information on her ancestors as there is on her), it flows well and is nicely broken up by photographs. Marks' analysis of Vivian's behavior as a nanny likely could have used a little more nuance. I generally find attempts by professionals to diagnose a person they've never met, particularly a deceased person with very little personal information left behind, fairly problematic and while I don't disagree that there was certainly evidence of mental illness here I could have done without their diagnoses in this book. Marks takes special care to emphasize Vivian's forward-thinking political and social beliefs, and I would have appreciated more time being spent on them, especially since they're restated without additional analysis or information in the appendix.

As ever, Vivian's collection raises questions about ownership, copyright, and privacy, which I think can be extended out to amateur and/or outsider art writ large. The author concludes that Vivian would be proud to have her work displayed after her death, and while I agree, I don't think she'd want it being displayed as it is now. There's a bit in the appendix where Marks writes about how developing, editing, and cropping photographs is basically as intrinsic to the art form as setting up the shot is, and I agree - particularly given all the evidence that Marks presents about Vivian being thoughtful about cropping. Still, there's no doubt that Vivian was a groundbreaking photographer, and I'm grateful her work was discovered.