March is Women’s History Month and APP would like to pay tribute to photographer Vivian Maier (1926 - 2009). Maier was a true testament to the fact that a person can live multiple lives and that our creative efforts are never in vain.
When a handful of collectors discovered her negatives in 2007 during a forced auction of her Chicago storage space, the world was introduced to a previously unrecognized master of photography who documented the streets of Chicago, NYC and LA for decades. This unselfish documentation of the everyday is now such a valuable glimpse at history through the eyes of a woman who experienced life primarily as a nanny whom a long-time client described as a real-life “Mary Poppins.”
She was the champion of bathroom selfies, of the window-shopping snapshot. The medium format film she used at the time probably only afforded her a dozen shots per roll, yet her oeuvre has been quantified to include over 100,000 negatives (very few ever actually printed by Maier).
Happy Women’s History Month. What passion are you exploring in your spare time?
© Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York