Review
"Her work alternately brings to mind Lisette Model, Leon Levinstein, Harry Callahan, Garry Winogrand, Weegee, Helen Levitt and Robert Frank. But the uncracked nut at the core of her mystery is this: Why didn't Vivian Maier show anyone her pictures?"
-Wall Street Journal
"Saved from obscurity, the work of an unknown street photographer is, at last, coming out of the shadows."
-Anthony Mason,
CBS News"An unassuming Chicago baby sitter named Vivian Maier was one of the pioneers of street photography. But for 60 years, nobody knew it."
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The New York Times Style Magazine
“An undiscovered artist whose
photography is now being compared to the giants, a reclusive woman who, in death, is attracting the kind of attention and acclaim she would have shunned in life.”
-The Huffington Post
"Show-cased in the new book Vivian Maier: Street Photographer, out this month from powerHouse-rivet the viewer with the extreme vulnerability of her subjects."
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Vanity Fair"[Maier] is a gifted visual thinking with a strong sense of self. Through [her] lens, self-shadows and window reflections are deftly composed more about context than the figure at the center"
-American Photo
"A combination of straight forward portraits, mirrored reflections and abstract self-portrayals, the collection...attempts to put a face to the name that's most recently captured the photography world's attention" -The Huffington Post
About the Author
There is still very little known about the life of
Vivian Maier. What is known is that she was born in New York in 1926 and worked as a nanny for a family on Chicago’s North Shore during the 50s and 60s. Seemingly without a family of her own, the
children she cared for eventually acted as caregivers for Maier herself in the autumn of her life. She took hundreds of thousands of photographs in her lifetime, but never shared them with anyone. Maier lost possession of her art when her storage locker was sold off for non-payment. She passed away in 2009 at the age of 83.
John Maloof is an author and street photographer involved in historic preservation of Chicago’s Northwest Side. He discovered the first negatives of Vivian Maier’s work in 2007 while compiling a book about the
history of the neighborhood where he grew up.
Geoff Dyer’s books include
But Beautiful (Picador, 2009),
Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It (Vintage, 2004),
The Ongoing Moment (Vintage, 2007) winner of the ICP Infinity Award for writing on photography, the novels
Paris Trance (Picador, 2010) and
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (Vintage, 2010), and a collection of essays,
Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (Graywolf Press, 2011).