28 Facts About Vivian Maier

Vivian Dorothy Maier was an American street photographer whose work was discovered and recognized after her death.

Vivian Maier took more than 150,000 photographs during her lifetime, primarily of the people and architecture of Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles, although she traveled and photographed around the world.

Vivian Maier's photographs were first published on the Internet in July 2008, by Slattery, but the work received little response.

Vivian Maier was born in New York City in 1926, the daughter of a French mother, Maria Jaussaud Justin, and an Austrian father, Charles Maier.

Vivian Maier's father seems to have left the family temporarily for unknown reasons by 1930.

When Vivian Maier was 4, she and her mother moved to the Bronx with Bertrand.

In 1951, aged 25, Vivian Maier moved from France to New York, where she worked in a sweatshop.

Vivian Maier moved to Chicago's North Shore area in 1956, where she worked primarily as a nanny and carer for the next 40 years.

Lane Gensburg later said of Vivian Maier, "She was like a real, live Mary Poppins," and said she never talked down to kids and was determined to show them the world outside their affluent suburb.

John Maloof, curator of some of Vivian Maier's photographs, summarized the way the children she nannied would later describe her:.

Vivian Maier was a Socialist, a Feminist, a movie critic, and a tell-it-like-it-is type of person.

Vivian Maier learned English by going to theaters, which she loved.

Vivian Maier was constantly taking pictures, which she didn't show anyone.

In 1959 and 1960, Vivian Maier embarked on a solo trip around the world, taking pictures in Los Angeles, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Yemen, Egypt, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Italy, France, and Switzerland.

Vivian Maier kept her belongings at her employers'; at one residence, she had 200 boxes of materials.

The Gensburg brothers, whom Vivian Maier had looked after as children, tried to help her as she became destitute in old age.

In November 2008, Vivian Maier fell on the ice and hit her head.

Vivian Maier was taken to a hospital but failed to recover.

Vivian Maier was buried in a patch of wild strawberries in a ravine near the house of a family whose children she had cared for in the early 1960s.

In 2007, two years before she died, Vivian Maier failed to keep up payments on storage space she had rented on Chicago's North Side.

Vivian Maier's photographs were first published on the internet in July 2008 by Slattery, but the work received little response.

Artist and photography critic Allan Sekula has suggested that the fact that Vivian Maier spent much of her early life in France sharpened her visual appreciation of American cities and society.

Vivian Maier later used a Leica IIIc rangefinder camera, an Ihagee Exakta, a Zeiss Contarex and other SLR cameras.

Vivian Maier writes that her work brings to mind the photographs of Harry Callahan, Garry Winogrand, and Weegee, as well as Robert Frank.

Roberta Smith, writing in The New York Times, has drawn attention to how Vivian Maier's photographs are reminiscent of many famous 20th-century photographers, and yet have an aesthetic of their own.

Maloof used the funds received from print sales and his film Finding Vivian Maier to help create the scholarship with the intention for it to be permanent and offered on a yearly basis.

In 2018, Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers recorded the song "Vivian Maier" for the Resistance Is Futile album; lyricist Nicky Wire is a fan of her work.

In 2017, the University of Chicago Library announced that a research collection of Vivian Maier images was donated by Maloof.