A full-career retrospective on the work of Vivian Maier, bringing together a selection of key works from throughout her life and career. When Vivian Maier's archive was discovered in Chicago in 2007, the photography community gained an immense and singular talent. Maier lived in relative obscurity until her death in 2009, but is now the subject of films and books, and recognized as one of the great American photographers of the 20th century. Born in New York in 1926, she worked as a nanny in New York and Chicago for much of her adult life. It was during her years as a nanny that she took many of the photographs that have made her posthumously famous. Maier's incredible body of work consists of more than 150,000 photographic images, Super 8 and 16 mm films, various recordings and a multitude of undeveloped films. Working primarily as a street photographer, Maier's work has been compared with such luminaries as Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and Joel Meyerowitz. Drawing on previously unpublished archives and recent scientific analyses, this retrospective sheds new light on Maier's work. With texts by Anne Morin and Christa Blumlinger, this thorough look at Maier's entire archive is organized thematically in sections that cover self-portraits, the street, portraits, gestures, cinematography, children, colour work and forms. A valuable addition to the continuing assessment of Maier's work, this book is a one-volume compendium of her most enduring images.

English summary: Secondhand cinema, Cinema de seconde main, explores this choice of artistic expression which reuses archival images and films, one that refers to the past but also can be understood as a living act. This work defines the new configurations of forms and meanings offered through archival cinema use by artists and cinematographers such as Harun Farocki, Morgan Fisher, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Jacobs, Alexander Kluge, Chris Marker, Bill Morrison, Matthias Muller, Al Razutis, and Peter Tscherkassky. French description: Nee du montage cinematographique, la reprise d'images animees est devenue une pratique quotidienne a l'age des techniques de reproduction numerique. Choix revendique et pratique artistique, le remploi pose depuis toujours la question de la puissance esthetique et epistemique du cinema. Ce livre s'interesse a un art d'archives contemporain, se rapportant certes au passe, mais qui peut etre compris sous ses differentes formes comme un acte vivant - de lecture, de transformation ou d'incorporation des images. Le film artistique d'archives, que ce soit dans la tradition avant-gardiste du found footage ou comme remontage essayiste, vise toujours a modifier, reelaborer, transcrire, arranger: par la repetition, il recherche l'originalite d'images et de sons nouveaux. Cette etude part d'un concept processuel de l'archive a travers le cinema et les nouveaux medias, et tente de degager la dynamique multiple des elaborations secondaires. Cinema de seconde main entreprend de definir de nouvelles configurations dans le deplacement des formes et des significations, et egalement au niveau de la mutation des dispositifs. Il s'appuie sur des analyses detaillees de films et d'installations d'artistes et de cineastes (Harun Farocki, Morgan Fisher, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Jacobs, Alexander Kluge, Chris Marker, Bill Morrison, Matthias Muller, Lisl Ponger, Al Razutis, Constanze Ruhm, Peter Tscherkassky), et contribue de facon decisive aux debats actuelsqui animent les etudes cinematographiques et les theories de l'art.