Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier, a stunning rarity on two counts.

Firstly, for the incredible body of work, a fine lesson in what can be achieved and communicated with the much maligned artform that is street photography and secondly for the fact that her work remained undiscovered until after her passing.

An American of French and Austro-Hungarian descent, Maier spent time living in both America and Europe before settling in New York City in 1951, where, having supposedly started to take photographs just two years prior, she produced her first incredible body of work. Moving to Chicago in 1956, she worked as a carer all the while taking photos of the city surrounding her , which she hid from everyone. In later life, she became poor and was rescued by three of the children she had nannied in her younger days who set her up in an apartment and cared for her, much like she had for them. One thing they didn’t realise though was that one of her storage lockers (containing over 10,000 negatives) was claimed to be auctioned off due to delinquent payments and just like that, Maier’s work, which she had shared with no-one was at risk of disappearing for ever. Luckily, the man whose hands a large proportion of the collection fell in to, John Maloof took note of the large body of work and delved into it, discovering the stunning quality of what he had just obtained. Spending the last few years since that day at the auction house in 2007, Maloof has managed to accrue an estimated 90% of Maier’s secret portfolio and now spends his days archiving the collection and arranging exhibitions round the world.

There has always been something that has drawn me to photographs of America in the 1950s, it was a time so rich with culture (and sadly, with it cultural divides) that it offered a great deal to those with the desire and ability to capture and convey those many endemic practices that still to this day, help to define our understanding of the country at the time. Robert Frank was able to perfectly capture little slices of American life in his collection The Americans from the outsider-looking-in standpoint, highlighting the American-ness of the people and scenes he captured, Maier however, manages to achieve a more intimate look into American life.

Perhaps partly due to her unassuming appearance, her use of a Rolloflex camera (held around hip-level with a top-mounted viewer so that she never lifted the camera to her face) and her familiarity with the people of the areas she was shooting in, the closeness she often attained to her subjects (sometimes in a covert manner) allows the viewer a far more detailed visual descriptive making for truly immersive photographs. Below is a selection of my personal favourites (from Maier’s time in New York and Chicago) but I would urge you to keep an eye out for exhibitions here

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and if you are N.Y.C. or L.A. based, head on down to the current exhibitions before they close on January 28th.

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