pearl · GR·168
Vivian Maier, Street Photographs
Five decades of street pictures, kept from almost everyone
Specimen · 2026-10-16 pearl · K17
Vivian Maier worked in the tones between: steam lifting off a New York sidewalk, a pigeon on a stone ledge, an avenue running beneath the El’s overhead tracks toward a distant midtown spire.
She began photographing in 1949 with a Kodak Brownie, bought a Rolleiflex in 1952 and kept shooting for five decades while working as a nanny, first in New York and from 1956 in Chicago, where she developed her own black and white film. She hid the pictures from almost everyone and left more than 100,000 negatives.
John Maloof has since reconstructed roughly 90 percent of the archive, which had been scattered at auction. The Maloof Collection publishes the work at vivianmaier.com.
Source: Maloof Collection · https://www.vivianmaier.com/
Tonal range bin K00 → K99
000816243240485664728088
Nearby on the ramp
Palette5 steps
K17
K17 · pearl
#D3D3D3
PMS Cool Gray 3 C
R211 G211 B211
K20
K20 · platinum
#CBCBCB
PMS Cool Gray 3 C
R203 G203 B203
K23
K23 · platinum
#C4C4C4
PMS Cool Gray 3 C
R196 G196 B196
K26
K26 · silver
#BCBCBC
PMS Cool Gray 4 C
R188 G188 B188
K71
K71 · iron
#4B4B4B
PMS Warm Gray 9 C
R75 G75 B75
Dossier4 rows
Born February 1, 1926, New York City
Died April 21, 2009
Cameras Kodak Brownie (1949), Rolleiflex (1952)
Archive More than 100,000 negatives
