The chicken man, 1967, Maxwell Street Market and skid row on West Madison Street in Chicago. (Photograph by Vivian Maier/Courtesy Cityfiles Press)

The street photography of Vivian Maier made a sensation when her cache of photos was discovered and the images began to be made public early last year. NYM story with links.

Heather Murphy, in Slate, reports that two books have already appeared: Vivian Maier: Street Photographer published late last year, to be joined next week by Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows.

The new book is a compilation of images from rolls of film which the photographer never even printed (!). As usual, her work is completely fascinating.

Hat tip to Fred Lapides.

This New York Times feature has a representative slide-show:

Vivian Maier, evidently one of America’s more insightful street photographers, has at last been discovered. The release of every fresh image on the Web causes a sensation among the growing legion of her admirers. … Ms. Maier’s streetscapes manage simultaneously to capture a redolent sense of place and the paradoxical moments that give the city its jazz, while elevating and dignifying the people in her frames — vulnerable, noble, defeated, proud, fragile, tender and often quite funny. …

What is known about Ms. Maier is that she was born in New York in 1926, lived in France (her mother was French) and returned to New York in 1951. Five years later, she moved to Chicago, where she worked for about 40 years as a nanny, principally for families in the North Shore suburbs. On her days off, she wandered the streets of New York and Chicago, most often with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera. Apparently, she did not share her pictures with others. Many of them, she never saw herself. She left behind hundreds of undeveloped rolls.

Vivian Maier blog

Russell Bowman Art Advisory Exhibition, Chicago, April 15, 2011 – June 18, 2011

Finding Vivian Maier: Chicago Street Photographer exhibition, January 8, 2011 – April 3, 2011

Vivian Maier, 1926-2009

Hat tip to Xavier.