A life examined

The work of Vivian Maier first came to widespread public attention in 2009, just a few months after her death. The detailed story of her life and discovery is discussed in a new all-encompassing biography.

Photographing across a period which spans the ’50s to the late ’90s, most of Maier’s extensive – and disorganised – archive had been kept in various storage lockers in Chicago, where she spent the later years of her life. As a result of unpaid bills, the contents of the lockers went up for auction in late 2007.

Those purchasing the contents almost certainly had no idea of the superlative work they had picked up. The archive is estimated to include 140,000 photographs – with many more which were never developed. In fact, it’s said less than 5% of her captures were actually processed and printed during Maier’s lifetime.

One of the initial buyers, a local photo dealer named Ron Slattery, put some of the work up online, but it didn’t garner too much attention. Owing money to another collector friend of his, Jeffrey Goldstein, he paid him in Vivian Maier prints. Another buyer, John Maloof, who was working on a book of the local area at the time, also became interested in the photographs. Goldstein and Maloof now own the vast majority of the Maier archive between them, with the bulk in Maloof’s possession.

During the year and a half that Maier was still alive, while the images were first being tentatively shared online, several tried to find out more about her, though the notoriously private individual was impossible to find online. It was only after her death notice appeared in early