Vivian Maier’s Hidden Photos

A pretty amazing story of a photographer that never got her due, until an historical hobbyist bought a box of never-before-developed film negatives and brought her work to life. Via MessyNessChic:

Picture this: quite possibly the most important street photographer of the 20th century was a 1950s children’s nanny who kept herself to herself and never showed a single one of her photographs to anyone. Decades later in 2007, a Chicago real estate agent and historical hobbyist, John Maloof purchased a box of never-seen, never-developed film negatives of an unknown ‘amateur’ photographer for $380 at his local auction house.

John began developing his new collection of photographers, some 100,000 negatives in total, that had been abandoned in a storage locker in Chicago before they ended up at the auction house. It became clear these were no ordinary street snaps of 1950s & 60s Chicago and New York and so John embarked on a journey to find out who was behind the photographs and soon discovered her name: Vivien Maier.

A self portrait:

Vivian died without recognition of her beautiful photos in 2009.

Since then, the work of this incredibly talented and mysteriously private woman has rocked the art world, receiving international mainstream media attention alongside exhibitions all over the world including London, New York, Los Angeles, Chiago, Hamburg and Oslo.

The anticipated new documentary:

Now, the guy who bought that box of negatives at his local auction house has made a documentary film about the incredible discovery of a lost talent and the path to Finding Vivian Maier.