Vivian Maier

Incorrigibly private, Vivian Maier’s secret life as a photographer wasn’t discovered until boxes of over 100,000 negatives and undeveloped film rolls were bought at auction two years before her death. Thanks in part to the documentary film ‘Finding Vivian Maier’ about the discovery and the subsequent exhibitions of this street photographer; Maier is no longer an unknown photographic talent and joins the ranks of Brassai, Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans. It was Maier’s day job as a nanny that enabled her, either on her days off or with the children she cared for, to trawl the streets of Chicago and New York for unsuspecting subjects who she captured with her Rolliflex. Here, Maier’s curious eye is revealed in many previously unseen captivating black-and-white images that pay as much attention to the downtrodden as to the well-heeled.