Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows

Over the course of several decades, Vivian Maier took more than 100,000 photographs, but only after she died alone and impoverished in 2009 did she become known and her talent recognized. By chance, her photographs, including many rolls of undeveloped film, were found in a storage locker that was sold at auction. When Maier's story and some of her photographs were published online, the world was introduced to the haunting story of a lonely, anonymous photographer who saw the world so vividly. As in the extraordinary Vivian Maier: Street Photographer (PowerHouse Books, 2011), Cahan and Williams (coauthors, The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed its River and the Land Beyond) of this fine book have carefully selected and arranged the images, and while the book includes curious vignettes about this unknown photographer, the collection of brilliant images is the strength of the work. They show that Vivian Maier was a great artist—not simply "the nanny photographer," as some have called her.