Vivian Maier – the secret street photographer

A self-portrait, New York, 5 May 1955 © Estate of Vivian Maier, courtesy of Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, NY 

Who was Vivian Maier?

Born in New York City in 1926, Maier was of French and Austro-Hungarian descent. She grew up between Europe and the United States, not through a life of wealth, but because, with her father no longer on the scene, her mother, who was in domestic service, went where there was work. All her life Maier was an outsider and a loner. With no family contact nor evidence of relationships, she worked as a nanny in Chicago, where she settled from 1956. 

A reclusive woman with a propensity to hoard, Maier was elegant, proud, feisty and, above all, private. Yet she was fascinated by people and society – and she had a remarkable gift. From her early 20s onwards she quietly captured life on the streets with her camera. Those shots, over 140,000 of them, form an astonishing collection of beautiful, unsettling, humorous and haunting images, which came to light by chance.

How was her work discovered?

It had lain hidden in storage lockers for years. Still shooting into the 1990s, Maier had been keeping her work in storage but had run out of money to pay to do so. One of the lockers was auctioned off, buyers bidding blind, with no idea of what lay inside. In 2007 her oeuvre came fully to light, when it was auctioned at a local thrift auction house in Chicago. Since then interest in Maier has gained momentum, culminating with exhibitions, documentaries and new books.

An image captured on 26 January 1955 in New York © Estate of Vivian Maier, courtesy of Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, NY 

Why did Maier favour street photography?

She saw the street as theatre. Some say she had an affinity with the poor; the down and out certainly feature strongly. But she was drawn to the human spirit in all its forms. We see bustling haughty matrons, street sellers, tiny children clutching mother’s skirts, and skinny, streetwise boys smoking cigarettes. Maier had a fascination with the human form. She gives us the anguish of rickety little malnourished knees and the gnarly hands of burly workers. She had a genius, too, for electrifying composition and the contrast of dark and light, be it seen in a plant edging delicately between the slats of a fence or a skyscraper reflected in a puddle.

A street seller, Chicago, 1971 © Estate of Vivian Maier, courtesy of Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, NY 

Who was she taking the pictures for?

Apparently, no one other than herself. Maier’s photography was a powerful means of self-expression. Her camera was part of her identity. Her work as a nanny gave her the freedom to be out and about with her charges. Her time off was spent heading to the darker areas of town, where she knew images were to be had. As a woman working alone, this took gumption. Although she developed some of her works, Maier rarely shared or showed them. This was despite finding herself, on occasions, in the right place at the right time, able to capture celebrities, among them Salvador Dalí, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Swanson and Audrey Hepburn.

What happened to Maier?

She worked as a nanny until 1996, retiring at the age of 70. It’s thought she stopped her photography around 1996. She died in 2009, aged 83, leaving the stash of unseen images that today have her being compared to Diane Arbus.

Find out more 

A beautiful new monograph, Vivian Maier (general editor Anne Morin), published by Thames & Hudson, reveals more on Maier’s work. For our special offer on this book, just go to this link: >>> https://theartssociety.org/arts-news-features/special-offers-you

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About the author

Sue Herdman is an arts and culture writer and Editor of The Arts Society Magazine