Born in New York, Vivian Maier spent forty years working as a nanny in Chicago, while nurturing a secret passion for image-making that led her to document American urban life in the 1950s and 60s. When the photographer died in 2009 at the age of eighty-three, the tens of thousands of images she had accumulated throughout her life began to see the light of day. “Maier must be placed among the great photographers of her time, on par with Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Lisette Model, and Helen Levitt” (John Maloof).