Vivian Maier

I get regular feeds from iPhoneography and one such feed led me to the recently discovered work of Vivian Maier.

It's a fasinating story of a unique individual who spent her days off, from working as a nanny, taking photographs with her Rolleiflex camera. An amatuer street photographer who lived a life in obscurity.

Her work was discovered by Chicago real estate agent John Maloof, also president of the Jefferson Park Historical Society in Chicago.

He attended an auction, bought a box full of negatives and so his journey begin into the discovery of Vivian Maier.

Vivian Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American amateur street photographer who was born in New York but grew up in France, and after returning to the U.S., worked for about forty years as a nanny in Chicago. During those years she took about 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes most often in Chicago, although she travelled worldwide, taking pictures in each location. Her photographs remained unknown and mostly undeveloped until they were discovered by a local historian in 2007.

When John finally discovered the photographer behind these then unknown works he set about finding her, it was an obituary that pointed to her whereabouts, she had died only days before he had set out to find her in 2009.

While working on a book about the Chicago neighbourhood of Portage Park, Maloof bought 30,000 prints and negatives from an auction house that had acquired the photographs from a storage locker that had been sold off when Maier was no longer able to pay her fees. After purchasing the first collection of Maier photographs in 2007, Maloof acquired the rest from another buyer at the same auction. Maloof discovered Maier's name at an early stage of his discovery, but was unable to find out more about her until just after her death, when he found an obituary notice in the Chicago Tribune.

If you haven't already seen her work, then I would highly recommend a peek. It gives a very unique window on a time and place that through Vivian's eye we see an equally unique perspective. Her perspective.

When I watched the video detailing the story and viewed her work for the first time I was blown away. Then when more details are revealed about the person behind the photographs it only served to enrich her work further. Up there with the likes of Richard Avedon in my humble opinion.

Sample of her work over at Cellar Door.