Camera in one hand, child in another: Vivian Maier

An American street photographer with an eye for the details of human life that aren’t always the prettiest, but which show us for who we really are. The crumpled trousers of a man clutching a woman’s hand in the street. An older gentleman snoozing on the job.  Vivian Maier lived in Chicago for most of her life, although she was a French citizen. She was born in New York in 1926 to a French mother and Austrian father. After spending some of the first part of her life in France, she worked as a nanny in the United States. She would take the children out for the day, her Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera slung around her neck, and take snaps as she went along. What she created was a vast number of images showing everyday life in America in the second half of the 20th century. She took pictures of families in her neighbourhood, children playing with tyres on the street, couples eating dinner in run-down apartment buildings or young men on their way to work. Maier stopped working as ...