Art

Vivian Maier: A Life in Shadow

Lauren Down | Thursday 6 January, 2011 15:48

Living in the shadows of history, the life and work of Vivian Maier has only surfaced thanks to an unremarkable day in the life of Chicago born real-estate agent John Maloof. In 2007 he stumbled across a box of negatives at a local auction house, he hoped to find some images he could use for a book he was compiling on Portage Park but what he found revealed a wealth of incredible black and white photographs taken in and around the Loop in downtown Chicago. Maloof began archiving the work and obtaining other boxes in search of the identity of the mysterious photographer until one day 2009 he found an envelope with the name ‘Vivian Maier’ scrawled across it. A quick search revealed an obituary from the Chicago Tribune, dated only days earlier: Maier had passed away at the age of 83.

Having only just scratched the surface of the 100,000-strong collection (a lot of it still in undeveloped film rolls), it is already overwhelmingly clear that this woman, revealed to be an eccentric free spirit and nanny, was indeed a ‘photographer extraordinaire.’ The compositions, the haunting anonymity of the subjects and the delicate moments of a private life revealed to the public make for immensely compelling images. Honest, breath taking and arresting these photographs reveal snippets of American culture from the 1950s and 1960s; kids play in the streets, dapper men and fashionable women go about their business and poverty stricken people stoop in front of shops. With her first solo exhibition running at the Chicago Cultural Centre from tomorrow until April how long will it be until Maier is perhaps considered amongst the greats?

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