Looking for Vivian

by Zhai Yongming
     trs. by Sophia Kidd

looking for Vivian
looking for a story covered up
looking for a life even Google couldn’t provide
looking for a pile of undeveloped negatives
looking for the visage behind the picture

looking for Vivian
looking for that changing address
looking for a shadow without a trace
she hides between children
looking for the children’s nanny
looking for the nanny’s homeland

looking for Vivian
looking for two arms suspended in mid-air
holding an old camera
holding a hundred and fifty thousand frames
looking for the face behind the glass
looking for that inner life never to be returned

looking for Vivian
looking for a hundred and fifty thousand ownerless negatives
looking for twenty boxes
looking for the drifter in those boxes

looking for Vivian
looking for a lonely stubborn soul
that boils within a stubborn body
anonymous in hiding but overflowing with scorching light
looking for mannequins with broken limbs
looking for the passionate eye gleaming for plastic skin
looking for Vivian
looking for a moth at the flame
that throws itself onto an expanse of streets and people
that smashes against the kitchen mirror
looking for the sorrow in the mirror
looking for the excrement of streets and leftovers
stuff them in a black box

why? when the suitcase came out
floating over New York   smoking
when those negatives circulated in the hands of strangers
when the dust of time was auctioned off cheaply
when countless faces emerged from the red liquid
hanging in rows of social platforms
why? aside from a name
had she ever come to our world?

looking for Vivian
it’s not about answers
why?   she didn’t share answers with the world
aside from her identity secrets and nationality
mere identification   destruction of genius
an art system that insulates society
what else is there?
one hundred and fifty thousand times why
or just once for nothing
with the tributes of twenty suitcases
buried along with her   in no woman’s land

Note:

Vivian Dorothy Maier (1926–2009) was only discovered for her photography posthumously.  She spent her life as a nanny, spending her free time as a hobby photographer, taking more than 150,000 photographs, most of which went undeveloped.  At first on Google, the only information about her photographs that could be found was her name.  Later, her photographs were bought by a young collector, who investigated some details of her life and disseminated her photographs to a world–wide audience.