Extraordinary documentary on BBC2 last night about Vivian Maier, a nanny living in New York and Chicago who took stunning photos with her Rolleiflex. She never showed them to anyone, never exhibited them, never had any fancy prints made. She stored them in containers in a warehouse – tens of thousands of prints and negatives. They were only discovered when, in old age and without her job, she could no longer pay the rent for the storage space. The contents were sold as job lots to a couple of dealers for a few hundred dollars. They didn’t know what they were buying…
Her website: http://www.vivianmaier.com
The BBC Imagine documentary is on iPlayer this week:
Peter Coles 