Vivian Maier obsessively documented the world around her from the 1950s to 1990s. This month, Vivian Maier: A Photographer Found will be published—the largest collection of her work to date. On October 30, a new exhibit of her photographs will open at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York.
Though born in the Bronx and raised mostly in France, Maier spent much of her adult life as a nanny in Chicago. Photography was never her profession, but rather a largely secret passion. At her first nannying job in Chicago, she developed her photographs in a bathroom. Over the years, Maier took to hoarding her negatives, amassing tens of thousands of undeveloped snapshots, which she kept in storage lockers.
Maier died in Chicago in 2009, essentially anonymous as an artist and photographer. But in recent years, her work has experienced a rapid renaissance—largely due to the efforts of a former real estate agent, John Maloof, who bought thousands of her unlabeled negatives at an auction in 2007. (Maloof also co-directed a recent documentary about her life.)
Below, several “lifetime” prints, printed before Maier’s death, soon on view at the Howard Greenberg Gallery.
All images: © Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York.