Famous Photographer
Vivian Maier
About
Vivian Maier was born on February 1, 1926 in New York City and died on April 21, 2009. Even though she was born in the United States, she spent most of her early life in France. She had a French mother and an Austrian father. She didn't have much of an educational background. She spent most of her life working as a nanny and doing photography on the side. When she moved to Chicago in 1956 where she became a nanny and really started getting into photography.
Photography
Vivian got into photography because she had this urge to want to document the world. Her trademark was street photography. She took over 100,000 photos that she locked away in a storage unit and were not found until her unit was auctioned off in 2007. Vivian was very poor so she couldn't develop most of her photos. She was discovered at this time as a photographer and wasn't' very famous until sometime after her death.
“Well, I suppose nothing is meant to last forever. We have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel. You get on, you have to go to the end. And then somebody has the same opportunity to go to the end and so on.” – Vivian Maier
My Reaction
Vivian Maier loved to capture what she saw. I think that's what I like about her and her photography the most. She would walk around the street and capture her century and what it was about. Her portraits can tell a lot about that person and their personality. She saw that the street was alive and captured it.