Vivian Maier
Unseen work
NOW
Fotografiska Shanghai, China
March 13 - July 19, 2026
The career of Vivian Maier (New York, 1926 - Chicago, 2009) is atypical, but it is nevertheless that of one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. Her photographic language is at the crossroads of humanist photography, a sensibility that she probably owes to her French origins, and American Street Photography, which constitutes her visual culture. Street scenes, sidewalk chronicles, portraits, self-portraits, gestures and details, this is the precise grid that Vivian Maier makes of her time. It was in the heart of American society, in New York from 1951 and then in Chicago from 1956, that she meticulously observed the urban fabric that reflected the great social and political changes in its history.
Her entire body of work was swept along by the current of the century, until its total disappearance. This exhibition sheds new light on the density and singularity of her work and allows this "amateur" photographer to be included in the history of photography, alongside such great names as Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Exhibition supported by Women In Motion, a Kering program that celebrates women in the arts and culture.
