Several years ago my friend Brian Howard told me about the amazing story of the photographer Vivian Maier. From her website: An American of French and Austro-Hungarian extraction, Vivian bounced between Europe and the United States before coming back to New York City in 1951. Having picked up photography just two years earlier, she would comb the streets of the Big Apple refining her artistic craft. By 1956 Vivian left the East Coast for Chicago, where she’d spend most of the rest of her life working as a caregiver. In her leisure Vivian would shoot photos that she zealously hid from the eyes of others. Taking snapshots into the late 1990′s, Maier would leave behind a body of work comprising over 100,000 negatives. Maier’s massive body of work would come to light when in 2007 her work was discovered at a local thrift auction house on Chicago’s Northwest Side. From there, it would eventually impact the world over and change the life of the man who championed her work and brought it to the public eye, John Maloof.
There have been several exhibitions of her work and now there is a film being made. This is one of the most amazing stories in photography ever. It keeps me looking at boxes of photographs that I see at garage and yard sales, flea markets and at small auctions! Treat yourself and look at the images on her website which John Maloof created and or if you are in New York go to Howard Greenberg Gallery ( one of my favorites ) and see the show which opens December 15th.
12/7/2011 | Posted by Eye Forward
Categories: Fashion
Tags: http://www.howardgreenberg.com/, http://www.vivianmaier.com/
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