When I saw Vivian Maier’s work at photoLA in 2012, I was surprised to have never heard of her. Amazingly, despite the quality of her work, she was only discovered, posthumously, when a man named John Maloof bought a box of old negatives for $400 dollars at an auction in 2007. Once he began looking through them, he quickly acquired more of her work from the same buyer. Through his research, it was revealed that Maier had worked as a nanny for over 40 years in Chicago and had taken over 100,000 photos.
Merry Karnowsky Gallery is currently showing part of the collection (a little over a hundred images) including some of her self portraits and color work. This show is open until Saturday, 1/25.
There is also a documentary Finding Vivian Maier coming to theaters in March.