PHOTOGRAPHY When Chicago-Based Nanny Vivian Maier Died In

PHOPHOTOGRAPHYTOGRAPHY SSTREETTREET LIFE ORIGINAL EYE Vivian Maier, left, in an undated self-portrait. Most of the photographs here are from the 1950s. Her astonishing portfolio of street portraits covers all ages and classes. One woman’s extraordinary images of ordinary lives he story of Vivian Maier is so It was only when the book was finished a few calls her, “a really, really awesome person to hang portraiture and street life, she covers children, “I hope she’s OK with what I’m doing,” he says. When Chicago-based nanny Vivian Maier died in 2009, she left behind incredible that the man who months later that he looked at the negatives out with if you were a kid. To be honest, I wish she covers abstraction and she does them all “She had no love life, no family and really had discovered her says: “If you again and slowly realised he was in possession she had been my nanny. She would take kids on with a style that I think digests the history of nobody that was close to her. The only thing that 100,000 negatives that no one but she had ever seen. Her work was made this up for Hollywood of something unimaginably precious. He began these wild adventures that only the coolest kids photography.” she had was the freedom of her camera to express it would be like, ‘Oh, come on, printing and posting Maier’s photographs to would think of doing.” She was also, he says, extraordinarily prescient: herself and I think the reason she kept it secret is that’s too hard to believe.’ She a blog (vivianmaier.blogspot.com), which he They had no idea, though, that their nanny “There’s work that reminds me of Diane Arbus, because it’s all she had.” discovered by chance by an estate agent who set about putting her pictures is,” he adds, “the most riveting describes as “a snowball that just started rolling spent her days off taking some of the most for example, but they were done before Diane He adds: “I wish I could go back in time to person I have ever encountered.” and has just been building ever since. Experts extraordinary images of the 20th century. When Arbus. A lot of what she was doing was ahead of say, ‘Look, Vivian, you can show this emotional on a blog. Now the photographs she took on her days off are being hailed as TThis is 29-year-old John Maloof, a former estate started chiming in and they said, ‘Holy cow, this Maier died in 2009 she left behind around its time.” release to the world. It’s OK, people love it – this agent from Chicago who has devoted the last four is… huge.’” 100,000 negatives that no one but she had ever Many of her images are of people on the is going to move the world.’” ‘ranking up there’ with the best in 20th-century street photography years to unravelling Maier’s story. His obsession The people that remember Maier – the Chicago seen. Now, the first exhibition of her work has margins; she documented the poor, elderly and began in 2007, the year he placed a $400 bid on families for whom she worked as a nanny in the just opened at the Chicago Cultural Centre homeless of New York and Chicago, and certainly a box of old negatives in an auction, hoping they 1950s and 1960s – recall a reclusive, eccentric and Maloof is at work on a feature-length seems to have thought of herself as a fellow More online mightcaption be dummy useful caption for a book on Chicago’s history individual, one who spoke in a thick French documentary about her life. outsider. It’s hard to imagine, then, this intensely See our gallery of some ofVivian Maier’s BY HERMIONE HOBY thatdummy he wascaption co-authoring. caption “Nothing was pertinent accent and wore a heavy overcoat and hat even in Lanny Silverman, the show’s curator, is private person welcoming the sort of exposure finest images at: fordummy the bookcaption so dummy I thought: ‘Well, this sucks, but we the height of summer. Her former charges often adamant that “the best of her work ranks up and excitement that her work is getting now. observer.co.uk/new-review cancaption probably dummy sell them on eBay or whatever.’” invoke Mary Poppins to describe her and Maloof there with anybody. She covers humanist That’s something that Maloof has agonised over. 16 THE NEW REVIEW | 16.01.11 | The Observer The Observer | 16.01.11 | THE NEW REVIEW 17.

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