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Employed as a nanny in Chicago and New York for over forty years, Maier was also a voracious observer of city life. Though she was a very private person, she was especially adept at capturing portraits of strangers on city streets. She frequently used a camera held at hip height with the viewfinder on top, which may have allowed her to photograph less obtrusively. Maier was never known to have shown her photographs to anyone. She never saw some of the over 100,000 negatives she stockpiled, because she left behind many undeveloped rolls of film. Recently, her work has begun to gain recognition as important twentieth-century street photography.

Keywords

Hat
Black and White
City
Street
Female
Old woman