Vivian Maier was an American street photographer known for her large collection of black-and-white and color photographs taken between the 1950s and 1990s. Her photography was not widely recognized by the public during her lifetime, known to the public after her work was accidentally discovered in 2007.
Maier demonstrates her excellent compositional ability in her self-portraits.
She arranges each elementprecisely,
making each photo have a strong visual impact.
Maier is very good at using natural and artificial light to create the atmosphere of the photos.
Many of her self-portraits show a perfect combination of light and shadow,
which enhances the dramatic effect of the photos.
Many of Maier's self-portraits are taken in the environment of her daily life, such as the home where she works, the streets or different corners of the city. These photos show her dual identity as a nanny and street photographer. Many of her self-portraits make use of shadows and silhouette techniques. By photographing her own shadow, she not only records her own existence, but also integrates herself into the environment and shows her relationship with the world around her.
Maier often uses mirrors and shop windows to take self-portraits. This method not only shows her face and body, but also incorporates the surrounding environment into the photo, creating a multi-layered image.
Vivian Maier was born in New York City and lived and worked in and around New York before leaving for the West
Coast and eventually moving to Chicago in 1956. This provided her with ample opportunities to perfectly frame
the “Capital of the World.” Maier’s photographic abilities were evident while she lived in New York and
matured after she moved to Chicago. Maier’s earliest photographs were taken around 1950, when Maier was about
24 years old and visiting some ancestral properties in France. From that point on, Maier was almost
inseparable from her camera, which she unintentionally used to document her life and capture the most moving
things she saw around her.
Her work depicts extraordinary composition, a love of light and shadow, and a true understanding of the human
condition. Maier enjoyed photographing architecture, plants, mothers and their children, the elderly,
newspapers, trash cans, and herself in artful self-portraits. These recurring themes provided the rhythm for
the more than 150,000 photographs she took throughout her life. Maier captured the ordinary in an
extraordinary way.
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