In 2007 a young eBay entrepreneur and real estate agent, called John Maloof, bought a box full of negatives for 400 dollars at a local thrift auction house in Chicago. He thought he was buying pictures of Chigago's Portage Park neighborhood, but soon realized he had found something else...The negatives turned out to have been taken by a woman whom "The New York Times" calls "one of America's more insightful street photographers". Her name was Vivian Maier. She was born i 1926 in New York, lived in France, and then returned, in 1951, to live in her city of birth for five years, before moving to Chicago. She used to wander the streets, taking photos - usually with her Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera - wherever she went.
Maier left behind her over 100,000 negatives, and hundreds of undeveloped rolls of film. She didn't share her photos with anyone else, so I'm glad John Maloof accidentally bought that box of negatives, so we can enjoy her work now. The pictures below were all taken by Maier in New York in the 50s, and I found them all on "
My Modern Met". Looking at them makes me which I could travel through time...
