Untitled Self-Portrait, Vivian Maier
Maier, who shot more than 200,000 images during her life, is best known for her haunting photographs of midcentury street life in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.
She shot with a Rolleiflex that hung around her neck on a strap; often, she'd engage her subject in banter, then shoot them on the sly. She was a deadeye for striking scenes: a young man riding a horse under the El tracks; a burned chair on the street, smoke still curling from its charred upholstery; her own garbled reflection in the aluminum door of a serve-yourself ice freezer. Her work only became famous after her death, when the contents of her unpaid storage lockers, spilling over with negatives and film and prints, were auctioned off to a Chicago collector.
Because of some bitter legal battles over her legacy and archives (Maier had no heirs), her work hasn't been widely exhibited. Now that those are resolved, the International Photography Hall of Fame is finally able to go forward with its delayed Maier show, a collection of unseen work pulled from an archive of 3,000 prints. That includes her darkroom proofs and landscape studies, which will likely expand her reputation beyond that of street photographer—and spur some pilgrimages to the museum.
Vivian Maier: Photography’s Lost Voice will be on display at the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum from February 21–May 26.
