The discovery of photographer Vivian Maier (1926–2009) is considered one of the great sensations in the history of post-war photography. During her lifetime, the American photographer remained completely unknown as an artist. It was not until 2007 that her work came to light, when real estate agent and amateur historian John Maloof purchased several boxes from a storage facility at an auction in Chicago. Expecting to find historical photographs of the city, he instead discovered a previously unknown and unexplored photographic treasure.
Image gallery
New York, 18. Oktober 1953 © Estate of Vivian Maier, Courtesy of Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
Capturing Life on the Streets
Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1926, Vivian Maier spent much of her childhood and youth in France. From the early 1950s onwards, she worked as a nanny in the United States while tirelessly documenting life on the streets with her Rolleiflex camera.
Recurring subjects in her work include everyday scenes, social structures, people on the margins of society and the world of children. Self-portraiture, however, held a particular fascination for Maier. The exhibition The Self Portrait and its Double focuses on this distinctive aspect of her photographic practice.
Self-Portraits and the Search for Identity
“Self-portraits appear in Maier’s œuvre in a wide variety of forms and variations—to the point that they almost constitute a language of their own within her language. A duality. Unlike Narcissus, who destroyed himself through the contemplation and admiration of his own image, Vivian Maier’s interest in self-portraiture was more a search for her identity. Due to her social status, which reduced her to invisibility, to a kind of non-existence, she quietly and unobtrusively set out to create irrefutable proof of her presence in a world in which she seemed to have no place.
Reflections of her face in a mirror or in an infinite regression, her shadow spreading across the ground, or the outline of her figure: every self-portrait by Vivian Maier is an affirmation of her presence in that particular place at that particular moment.”
— Anne Morin, Curator
An Extensive Body of Work
Over the course of around 40 years, Vivian Maier created an immense body of work, estimated to comprise between 150,000 and 160,000 black-and-white negatives, several thousand colour films and slides, as well as dozens of Super 8 and 16mm films, audio recordings and everyday documents.
Throughout her lifetime, Maier kept her photographic work almost entirely private. She rarely showed her photographs to others, and a large proportion of her films were never even developed. Only after the chance discovery of her archive did her photography become known to a wider public.
Recognition After a Lifetime of Obscurity
Vivian Maier died impoverished and largely isolated in a nursing home in Chicago in 2009. Having remained virtually unknown as a photographer throughout her lifetime, she now occupies a prominent place in the history of photography and is mentioned alongside figures such as Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Helen Levitt and Garry Winogrand.
- The exhibition was curated by Anne Morin, Director of DiChroma, Madrid.
Additional information
OPENING:
Friday, 4 December 2026, 7–9 pm.
Speakers: Katharina Mouratidi, Artistic Director of f³ – freiraum für fotografie, and Anne Morin, Director of DiChroma.
Opening hours:
Tue–Sun, 1 pm–7 pm
Accessibility
“The Self-Portrait and its Double” explores Vivian Maier’s self-portraits and her photographic quest for identity and visibility.
