Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier (1926-2009) was a maid all her life. Switching from houses to house every few years. She lived in Chicago homes. As her past employers recalled, she always had a camera with her. An elderly couple whom were Vivian's final employers, auctioned off over 30,000 negatives of her images she had taken over the years to a young historian named John Maloof. Most of the negatives weren't even developed. However, after scanning the images and viewing them properly for the first time ever, he realized he had found something incredible. The pictures were amazing. He went back to the elderly couple and bought the rest of her negatives, over 100,000 all together.

He's still in the process of developing them, and it will take him a few more years. Meanwhile, her works have their own display in the Chicago Cultural Center. It's sad that most of the film wasn't even developed and that she never knew how amazing her photos are. At the same time, it must be exciting for Maloof to see new, wonderful photography everyday that's never been seen by anyone else. She took mainly street life photos. Most of the people in the pictures look like they don't know they're being photographed. Most of them take my breath away. She's my new favorite photographer. To see her works, you can go to his blog. Also, here is a great video that introduced me to this story.