Vivian Maier may have worked as a nanny, but her true vocation was as a photographer. Starting in the 1950s, Maier shot street scenes in New York and Chicago. The images she captured were insightful, frank and largely unseen during her lifetime. In 2010, Jeffrey Goldstein began to collect Maier’s negatives, prints, slides and home movies, which were being sold in Chicago auction houses. (A storage facility had sold off many of Maier’s belongings, including thousands of her negatives, when she defaulted on payments.)
”Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows,” an exhibit of 30 of her black-and-white photographs from Goldstein’s collection, is currently on display at the Catherine Couturier Gallery (formerly the John Cleary Gallery). This is the first time her work has been exhibited in Texas. ”They’re quite stunning pieces,” says Joseph Roberts, assistant director of the gallery. ”And it’s a fascinating story. [Maier] took over 100,000 pictures, and they’re still being developed.”
”Out of the Shadows” includes several self-portraits, which Maier frequently took. There are also beach scenes from New York’s Coney Island, people on the street, and one unusual shot that Roberts says is a favorite for both him and gallery owner Catherine Couturier. ”There’s this picture of lightbulbs in a trash can on a Chicago street. We never would have thought it at the beginning, but it has become our favorite. It’s just a lovely image.”
Tuesdays-Saturdays. Starts: Sept. 8. Continues through Oct. 13, 2012
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2012.