‘We had no idea she was a photographer,’ said Vivian Maier’s employer. These were the words muttered during the filming of the documentary Finding Vivian Maier (2013). It is the story of a woman who spent her life working as a nanny to only then be discovered posthumously as one of the greatest street photographers. ‘We didn’t know some creative person lived here.’ I don’t suppose, however, that anyone might have seen her walking about with her Rolodex in hand? Might that offer a clue?

While I don’t begrudge this individual for not knowing—or at least recognizing—that Maier might have had some creative inkling, to her employers and the outside world, she was ‘just a nanny.’ I mean, why would there be more? Could there possibly be some artist underneath? Or is this just another example of the arrogance of the non-artist? So what is this arrogance, then? We toil within in an image-driven world, where the thought of anything beyond what one sees does not exist. Maier worked as a nanny and so this is all she would ever be to those for whom she worked. Vivian Maier—Nanny Extraordinaire and nothing more.

I have only had one person of authority ever recognize something special about me. My high school English teacher—Mrs. Vaughan—she could see I had writing talent. Not only a teacher—she was an artist herself. Yet other than she, no professor, no employer, no supervisor ever saw anything more than how I outwardly appeared. Usually lacking in confidence, I’d labor among only to repeatedly feel misunderstood and forgotten. ‘But you don’t know what people think—perhaps they did see more,’ one might suggest. Alright, I’ll humor this a moment. ‘I know you,’ one of my supervisors said. Admittedly, her words made me cringe. She meant well, but whom did she know, exactly? I wanted to inquire but did not. I was, after all, forced into subservience, as I wished to keep my job. So, rather than address it, I continued to feel shoehorned into a culture I felt I did not belong. God forbid if my passion points to creativity over corporation. […]