Vivian Maier

­Vivian Maier was one of the most mysterious photographers. She was born in NYC in 1926, but grown up in France. In 1951, she returned to NY alone and started to worked as a nanny. She also started taking photos constantly on street from that time. Her photos were discovered accidentally by John Maloof in an auction in 2007, two years before she died. Maloof uploaded this “unknown” photographers’ work on Flickr and received a lot of praise. He later exhibited these photos in Chicago and bring Maier’s work to publics. Unfortunately, Vivian Maier had passed away at that time.

Maier tend keep herself closed and always carry a camera with her when she went out. She has taken tons of negatives mainly in NYC and Chicago. The motivation behind her photos is not clear, but it is for sure is that she shot these photos for herself and rarely showed them to anyone else.

I really like her photos. I could not believe that these photos were shot by a nanny. By just looking at her photos, people may feel that they are taken by a photojournalist or professional photographer. Her work is very solid, sharp and vivid and full of detail. They were exposed accurately and composed carefully. Maybe covered by her nanny job, people looks so natural and relaxing in her photos. Also because she usually shot closely, it feels that there is no distance between the objects and her.

Maier shot constantly in five decades and had taken about 150,000 photographs through her life. That’s a huge number comparing to 3,000 photos that I took with my film cameras in the past four years. Moreover, I could hardly believe that she worked full-time as a nanny and all of these work was shot in her leisure time. Some people thought they will spend more time taking photos if they work full-time as a photographer. However, we can always find excuses for not picking up a camera and shooting.

Vivian Maier is one of my favorite street photographer. She is so mysterious and full of characters. She worked full-time as a nanny and only photographed in spare time. She only shot for herself and never published her photos. She lived in an afloat live and collected everything in boxes. There are more than 2,000 rolls of film that had not been developed before she passed away.