Vivian Maier worked as a nanny but kept up an amazing life as a prolific photographer of life on the streets of Chicago. The enormous trove of her negatives has recently led to major exhibitions around the world. A historian named John Maloof set off this furor when he purchased a box of thirty thousand prints and negatives being auctioned away by a storage facility. Little did he know that he had stumbled upon an incredible record of mid-century life in the big city.
This photograph makes me think of Citizen Kane.
I took a picture of him from half a block away. He held some papers out toward me. I went closer and asked if I could take his picture up close. He nodded. When I was done he spoke French to me, telling me he did not speak English. When I spoke in my halting but accurate French he smiled and seemed proud of me. We shook hands and I told him I would see him around. A passerby stopped and said that I had just taken the picture of a legend.
