Fashionising.com > Fashion Industry > Industry news & changes

Vivian Maier: the original street style photographer

Written by Allan Barger

Long before the internet existed in any meaningful form and Scott Schumann picked up his camera to photograph fashion on the streets, there was Vivian Maier. Vivian fled France during World War 2 and settled in Chicago. She went on to chronicle the Chicago streets in the 1950s through to 1970s.

The amazing part of the story is that these photos would probably never had come to light if not for the efforts of John Maloof. It was his great fortune to be at a furniture & antique auction where he purchased a set of around 40,000 mostly medium format negatives. He then spent several days sifting through all the shots and was completely taken by Vivian's photos; luckily for us he has decided to scan the photos and share them with the world via this blog.

Vivian remains an enigmatic figure: she died just days before John's attempt to find more information on her. Since then, however, a vague outline has come to light. The people at Central Camera - a place where she bought most of her supplies - remember her as a "keep your distance from me" type of person, but she was also quite outspoken. Her photos concentrate more on people then fashion yet we felt utterly compelled to let you know about them. After all you can still pick up some truly vintage inspiration.

Written: 17th October 2009 at 18.07