Finding Vivian Maier is an absorbing, fascinating and ethically complex film that questions whether an artist’s personal life should be open for exploration.

For every photographer, painter, musician and filmmaker that is known to us, there is likely several more that are as equally talented, yet undiscovered. We humans are blessed with seeing and analysing the many things that makes our world such a vibrant and unique planet. Some like to share their vision. Others do not.

Photographer Vivian Maier belonged in the latter. It was only after her death that her street photography (100,000 photos taken over decades) was released to the world, thanks to filmmaker and historian John Maloof whose discovery of Maier’s work would lead to an obsession into her immensely guarded, secretive life.

The result is this documentary, and it’s easy to say why Maier’s story engrosses so. With every revelation upon revelation an enthralling yet tragic story unfolds. Many interview heads feature, mostly those who Maier worked for in her main occupation as a nanny. Most describe a wonderfully eccentric person (the term “European” often used). Some reveal a deeply troubled woman. What’s shared by all is that Maier took great pains to guard her past and to not reveal any semblance of a personal life.

Yet here in Finding Vivian Maier her life is laid bare by two men she never met (Maloof sharing directorial duties with Charlie Siskel), to a world she only wanted to view through a camera lens. Immediately conflict arises. We know that this sort of attention is evasive, yet so engrossing is Maier’s life story, and so good the filmmaking that brought it to life, that you cannot look away.

Of course Maier’s work features prominently throughout, and even we novices can see that her eye for capturing squalid, downtrodden, and broken people and their environments on the streets of Chicago and New York City was indeed special, and said much about how Maier viewed the world.

The “why” to that “how” brings with it much sadness. Maier could have had a life filled with adulation and wealth due to her photography. But those same impulses that drove her vision also drove her deeper into a very lonely existence. Kudos to Maloof and Siskel into making us believe that we knew her well.