Odd Saint:Vivian Maier

John Maloof, a  street photographer from Chicago, bought a box of negatives at an auction, and aquired the work of Vivian Maier.  He found thousands of negatives, and pieced together that she was French and worked as a nanny in Chicago. Maloof bought the same camera, and started taking pictures in the same streets as Maier.  This is better than the thrift store treasure of old scrapbooks and answering machine tapes.  Ghostly, yes, but not so much evidence of  a life unaccessible and very lived, but more  of a collection of a woman’s passion (30-40 thousand pictures), and talent that depended on little but her own interest.  And, we get to see what the world looked like in the 50’s and 60’s when it wasn’t posing.

Maloof’s blog Vivian Maier-Her Discovered Work posts new pics from the collection often, and is a treat.