Vivian Maier

The work of US American photographer Vivian Maier (1926–2009) came to public attention under extraordinary circumstances. In 2007, the contents of her storage unit in Chicago were auctioned off due to outstanding rent payments. Alongside clothing, books and notes, it contained an extensive holding of over 120,000 photographs.

From 1956 onward, Vivian Maier lived in Chicago, where she worked as a nanny for four decades. Given her intensive photographic practice, devoted to documenting the everyday life of the city, she became known posthumously as the “Nanny with the Camera”. Maier's work remained largely unnoticed during her lifetime. Its significance for the history of photography became visible only after her death.

Maier engaged intensively with the history of photography. In connection with selected works by photographers from the collection of the Kunstpalast, her work is contextualized art-historically on a larger scale for the first time in the exhibition “Vivian Maier. Close up”.

With more than 150 photographs, the exhibition “Vivian Maier. Close-up” focuses on recurring themes and motifs in the photographer's oeuvre: childhood, her numerous self-portraits, color photography, to which she increasingly turned particularly from the 1970s onward, and her famous street scenes, in which she captured urban life as a silent observer.

Curator: Stefanie Ufrecht