Vivian Maier

In her own hands.

Vivian Maier

In only a few years, Vivian Maier has risen to become one of the most important American photographers of the twentieth century. While she was alive, she showed her photographs, which numbered more than 150,000 negatives, to no one; she didn’t even see a large part of her work herself. In 2007, at an auction, several thousand undeveloped rolls of film were discovered alongside vintages and negatives.

Vivian Maier’s photographic eye remains fascinating to this day. Born 1926 in New York City as the daughter of European immigrants, she earned a living as a nanny for over forty years. Her real passion, however, was photography. Her images, taken for the most part in the 1950s and 1960s, captured the street life of Chicago and New York. Her photos are direct; she shot what she saw and trusted her intuition. Her images speak of the beauty of the ordinary and the tragic-comic element that so often dwells in the banalities of life.