THE PHOTOGRAPHER VIVIAN MAIER, A STREET PHOTOGRAPHER FROM THE 1950S – 1990S.
VIVIAN’S WORK WAS DISCOVERED AT AN AUCTION HERE IN CHICAGO WHERE SHE RESIDED MOST OF HER LIFE. HER DISCOVERED WORK INCLUDES OVER 100,000 MOSTLY MEDIUM FORMAT NEGATIVES, THOUSANDS OF PRINTS, AND A TON OF UNDEVELOPED ROLLS OF FILM. (source: http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com/)
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“What is known about Ms. Maier is that she was born in New York in 1926, lived in France (her mother was French) and returned to New York in 1951. Five years later, she moved to Chicago, where she worked for about 40 years as a nanny, principally for families in the North Shore suburbs. On her days off, she wandered the streets of New York and Chicago, most often with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera. Apparently, she did not share her pictures with others. Many of them, she never saw herself. She left behind hundreds of undeveloped rolls.”
“Mr. Maloof acquired his first boxful of her negatives for $400 at an auction in 2007. They had been in a commercial storage locker whose contents were seized for non-payment.”
(http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/new-street-photography-60-years-old/)
Fantastic! I never had heard of this amazing photographer, but she was really good!