Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Finding Vivian Maier

This past weekend, my roommates and I went to an exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center that I had been wanting to check out for some time. "Finding Vivian Maier" is a captivating collection of street style photography from an artist whose work was not discovered until after her death.

Born in New York to Austrian and French immigrant parents, and spending some of her formative years in France, [Vivian Maier] eventually ended up in Chicago as a nanny to wealthy North Shore clients, but her passions ran much deeper. Over 100,000 negatives and more than 3,000 prints of her massive body of work were discovered [by writer John Maloof] in an estate auction shortly before her death in 2009.

While not much is known about Maier herself or her reasons for keeping her photographs hidden, this first exhibition of her work reveals a keen eye for observing the people and fashions of Chicago in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
-explorechicago.org


Maloof now chronicles his adventures through a blog as he develops her film and uncovers pieces of the mysterious puzzzle that was Vivian's life. Keep up with his discoveries by following his blog here. But, if you can make it to the exhibit before it ends on April 3, I'd highly recommend it.




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