The Mystery of Vivian Maier - Street Photographer

During a Chicago area estate sale, 27 year old John Maloof purchased a box full of 30,000 negatives an quite possible discovered the greatest street photographer of the 20th century.  Instantly John knew he stumbled upon a treasure and decided to share some of the images on a street photography website.  Within 24 hours he had received hundreds of emails with book, documentary and gallery offers.  After some research he discovered that the street photography was captured by Vivian Maier, a Chicagoan nanny who captured the city on her days off.

Out of the more than 100,000 negatives I have in the collection, about 20-30,000 negatives were still in rolls, undeveloped from the 1960’s-1970’s. I have been successfully developing these rolls. I must say, it’s very exciting for me. Most of her negatives that were developed in sleeves have the date and location penciled in French (she had poor penmanship).
- John Maloof 

See the Kickstarter project to create the documentary “Finding Vivian Maier” (already beyond the $20k goal), a blog dedicated to Vivian Maier’s work, and the original discussion on Flickr that lead to her discovery.

Thanks @bethanyhamm @jeremycowart for the link!