Vivian Maier's 'Unseen Work' Comes into Focus in Shanghai

A major solo exhibition by Vivian Maier (1926-2009), one of the most legendary street photographers of the 20th century, will be unveiled at Fotografiska Shanghai next month.

The exhibition, titled "Unseen Work," will feature more than 200 vintage and modern black-and-white and color prints, a special screening of motion-picture footage captured with her 8mm camera, and personal artifacts.

Coinciding with the centenary of her birth, the exhibition, set to run between March 13 and July 19, is structured along thematic lines and traces the full arc of Maier's multi-phase career.

An American of French and Austro-Hungarian extraction, Maier has been described as "the most mysterious photographic genius of the 20th century." She bounced between Europe and the United States before coming back to New York City in 1951. Having picked up photography just two years earlier, she would comb the streets of the Big Apple refining her artistic craft.

By 1956 Maier left the East Coast for Chicago, where she'd spend most of the rest of her life working as a nanny and a caregiver. During her leisure time, Maier would shoot photos that she zealously hid from the eyes of others. Taking snapshots into the late 1990s, she created over 150,000 photographs, but never printed most of her negatives and never actively showed her work to the world.

Maier created out of pure love, driven solely by an inner calling.

A legend of 20th-century street photography, she created a monumental visual archive of the 20th century through the keen eye of an "outsider."

Living her life in obscurity in the suburbs of Chicago, the amateur street photographer produced an expansive body of photographic work that became a media sensation in late 2010, nearly two years after her death.

If you go:

Date: March 13-July 19, 10:30am-11pm (no entry after 10pm)

Admission: 80 yuan/US$11.6 (weekdays), 100 yuan (weekends & public holidays)

Address: 127 Guangfu Rd, Jing'an District

静安区光复路127号