This unique additional exhibition of Metropolis shows the work of the recently discovered photographer Vivian Maier (1926-2009). Most pictures have never been on display before. Her streetphotography shows humorous, moving, beautiful, and raw images of all facets of city life in America in the 1950's.
A good street photographer must possess many talents: an eye for detail, light, and composition; impeccable timing; a humanitarian outlook; and a tireless ability to constantly shoot, shoot, shoot and never miss a moment. It is hard enough to find these qualities in trained photographers with the benefit of schooling and mentors and a community of fellow artists and aficionados supporting and rewarding their efforts. It is incredibly rare to find it in someone with no formal training and no network of peers.Yet Vivian Maier is all of these things, a professional nanny, who from the 1950s until the 1990s took over 100,000 photographs worldwide—from France to New York City, to Chicago and dozens of other countries—and yet showed the results to no one. The photos are amazing both for the width of the work and for the high quality of the humorous, moving, beautiful, and raw images of all facets of city life in America’s post-war golden age.
There is still very little known about the life of Vivian Maier. What is known is that she was born in New York in 1926 and worked as a nanny for a family on Chicago’s North Shore during the 50s and 60s. Seemingly without a family of her own, the children she cared for eventually acted as caregivers for Maier herself in the autumn of her life. She took hundreds of thousands of photographs in her lifetime, but never shared them with anyone. Maier lost possession of her art when her storage locker was sold off for non-payment. She passed away in 2009 at the age of 83.
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