(RE)Searching for Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier was a nanny by trade, but in private, she was a photographer, and perhaps one of the best ever. Living in Chicago for most of her life, her work was private and undiscovered until a group of colleagues purchased the contents of her defaulted storage locker. In her old age, she had fallen and later died in the hospital. Her photography has found a permanent place in the history of 20th century photographers. But who owns the copyright?

Copyright law is complex when it comes to those that die without a will. Two of the people who purchased her negatives, prints, and portfolios from that storage locker began selling the work without the proper rights, and without performing a proper search to find a living heir. That’s where David Deal enters the picture.

Photographer turned copyright attorney, David Deal, was fascinated by her work, and her case. Within a few weeks of learning of the story, he’d found a living heir in France, and for the next 12 years—the case is still ongoing at the start of 2023—he dedicated a great deal of his time in and out of courtrooms in Cook County, Illinois, on behalf of his clients. You see, there wasn’t only one living heir. Deal found heirs from Slovakia, Austria, and France, and he represents them all.

In 2017, I accompanied him on a road trip visiting the people he had located with the help of a team of genealogists. There were potential heirs that turned out not to be, and several that had legitimate claims to the photographer’s growing fortune, estimated at several million dollars, and is expected to increase year over year.