Fotografiska opens exhibition of Vivian Maier’s postwar America

Fotografiska in Tallinn is opening an exhibition of Vivian Maier, the nanny whose photographs documented the streets of New York and Chicago, ERR reports.

Maier, who lived from 1926 to 2009, is considered one of the best street photographers of the 20th century. Her contribution to photography was discovered only after her death.

The exhibition presents nearly 200 works created from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s. It includes vintage and contemporary photographic prints, colour and black-and-white photographs, Super 8 films, audio recordings and contact sheets added specifically for the Tallinn exhibition.

Maier belonged to the working class, which remained largely invisible at the height of the American Dream. A highly private person who kept her distance from material possessions, she worked as a nanny. With children in tow, she moved through urban spaces, observing and photographing everyday life while unknowingly creating an extraordinary visual archive of postwar America.

Curator Anne Morin has described the discovery of Maier’s photographs after her death as one of the greatest lucky accidents in the history of photography.

In 2007, one of Maier’s storage units was sold through a local auction house in Chicago because of unpaid debts. It contained a vast number of negatives accumulated over her lifetime, a discovery that later influenced the photography world.