Vivian Maier: The Color Work captures the street life of Chicago and New York over four decades

Dating from the 1950s to the 1980s, the show captures the street life of Chicago and New York, and includes a number of her enigmatic self-portraits. It coincides with the publication of Vivian Maier: The Color Work, the first book devoted to her colour images with a foreword by renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz and text by Colin Westerbeck, a former curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago.

"Maier was an early poet of color photography," writes Joel Meyerowitz. "You can see in her photographs that she was a quick study of human behavior, of the unfolding moment, the flash of a gesture, or the mood of a facial expression – brief events that turned the quotidian life of the street into a revelation for her."

Since 2010, Maier’s photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. The 2013 documentary film, Finding Vivian Maier, co-directed by historian John Maloof (who discovered her work at an auction in Chicago in 2007), was nominated for an Academy Award.

Born in New York City, Vivian Maier (1926–2009) spent much of her youth in France, worked for 40 years as a nanny mostly in Chicago, and photographed consistently over five decades. When she died, she left behind more than 150,000 photographic images – prints, negatives, transparencies, and rolls of undeveloped film, though few had ever heard about or seen her work. Maier’s colour work was made during her last 30 years. After retiring her signature Rolleiflex, she began working with a 35-millimetre camera and produced roughly 40,000 Ektachrome colour slides.

"Maier was a self-invented polymath of a photographer," writes Colin Westerbeck in the book. "The one advantage Maier gained from keeping her photography to herself was an exemption from contradiction and condescension. She didn’t have to worry about either the orthodoxy or the approval of her peers."

Vivian Maier: The Color Work runs from 14 November 2018 until 5 January 2019 at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City. For more information, visit www.howardgreenberg.com.