Vivian Maier
John Maloof of Flickr’s Hardcore Street Photography group recently bought tens of thousands of black and white medium format negatives by Chicago street photographer Vivian Maier, who worked through the ’50s-’70s and died this April.
The story, pieced together from the thread:
I purchased a giant lot of negatives from a small auction house here in Chicago. It is the work of Vivian Maier, a French born photographer who recently past away in April of 2009 in Chicago, where she resided. I have a ton of her work (about 30-40,000 negatives) which ranges in dates from the 1950′s-1970′s.
I just contacted the Chicago Cultural Center and applied for an exhibition with the curator. It takes a few months for a response. I contacted the Stephen Daiter Gallery. The person I spoke with said the same thing, “strong work… above average for the time period” but, since they are negatives, not prints, they can’t do much for me. I thought about contacting the Chicago History Museum but just the thought of this stuff getting filed away for reference purposes keeps me from doing that. I have an emotional attachment to her work at this point.
I seriously don’t think she had heirs. One of her obituary’s said that she was a “second mother to”…(so and so). I looked them up and they are not related. I assume it was the children she was the nanny to for many years, who also most likely put up the obituary. If there were any heirs, you would think they would have claimed some of her estate. Instead, her entire property was auctioned off, to my knowledge. This is what I learned talking to the owners of the auction house. I looked into the legal rights on these and it’s vague if there are no heirs.
If anyone knows anything about Maier or has an interest in purchasing or showing these photos, John would probably like to hear from you. If you’re not on Flickr, contact me and I’ll relay the message.
