I Do What I Do Because I Love It: The Vivian Maier Model

Vivian Maier

Why do you do what you do?  What do you do for most of your day?  The answer is probably work.  We spend most our day at our job, doing what we do to make a living.  Our motivation for what we do might be mixed as to why we do what we do.   I have always strived to do what I love and pray that I could make a living doing it.  So far it’s working out for me.

I have never done what I’ve done looking for fortune or fame but rather for fulfillment.  As I approach my 52^nd birthday this month I am once again retooling and retraining myself to do what I love. I love to tell stories via the written word, photography and videography.  My time at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is a time of molding.  I am slowly becoming a photographer and as I am on this quest I want to remind myself that I am doing this because I love it.

One thing I have done at SCAD is search out the artist whose life and work I connect with.  For me it is more than your work it is your life that I also have to connect with.  I have major connection with Vivian Maier.   Vivian Maier shot non-stop her entire adult life.  She shoot not to show her work or sell her work but because she loved her work.  She died in 2009 and there is no record that she showed her work to anyone. Her work was discovered by John Maloof  in 2007 and he brought her work to the  public and began to promote her work (see story below).

When I first saw her street photographs I was hooked.  I was moved by her work.  Every artist has that person, that artist who they connect with and that person becomes their mentor (directly or indirectly).  For me Vivian Maier has become one of my mentors. While I love her work I am even more attracted to what appears to be the motivation behind her work.  I believe she did it because she loved it.  She couldn’t help but shoot pictures, create images, and she did all of her life.  She walked with that Rolleiflex camera around her neck and she created images. 

Vivian Maier

She didn’t shoot to show or to sell but now her prints are selling like hot cakes for hot prices.  Her motivations were pure and the reward still came. Some debate whether she would want her work being shown and sold.  Ms. Maier died in 2009 and by the time John Maloof realized whose work he had discovered all he could find of her was an obituary.  We don’t know how she would feel about her posthumous fame.  What we do know is that her work is being received by the world with rave reviews.  She is inspiring a new breed of street photographers like myself.  Her work has made a difference because I believe she loved what she did, she was good at it, and she worked hard at her craft.

In the end I believe we must do what we love.  We must work hard at it, get the training / education we need and never look back.  We must love what we do so much that if we never made a penny from it we would still do it.  I don’t want to do what I do for the show or the doe but rather for the love.  In the end I do hope that my work will make the world we live in a more loving and just place.  For my work to make the world a more loving and just place I must love the world and the work I do that I commit back to the world in love.  What do you love?  What are you becoming?   How are you preparing yourself to do what you were created to do?   Do you believe that you were created on purpose to make a difference?

Vivian Maier