Vivian Maier ( 1926 - 2009 )
Vivian Maier spent most of her life working as a nanny, carrying a Rolleiflex camera wherever she went. During her free time, she roamed the streets of Chicago and New York, quietly documenting everyday life, while remaining almost entirely unknown as a photographer.
Although she produced more than 150,000 photographs over several decades, Maier rarely shared her work. Thousands of negatives, prints, and undeveloped rolls remained stored in boxes, unseen for years as financial difficulties prevented her from properly storing and developing much of her archive.
In 2007, 26-year-old historian and collector John Maloof accidentally discovered Maier's archive after purchasing a box of anonymous negatives at a Chicago auction. What began as an anonymous collection soon revealed one of the most extraordinary bodies of street photography of the twentieth century, transforming Vivian Maier from an unknown nanny into a posthumously celebrated photographer