[2] In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier's photographs on the image-sharing website Flickr, and the results went viral, with thousands of people expressing interest.

She was born in New York City in 1926, the daughter of a French mother, Maria Jaussaud Justin, and an Austrian father, Charles Maier (also known as Wilhelm).

Lane Gensburg later said of Maier, "She was like a real, live Mary Poppins," and said she never talked down to kids and was determined to show them the world outside their affluent suburb.

[13] The families who employed her described her as very private and reported that she spent her days off walking the streets of Chicago and taking photographs, usually with a Rolleiflex camera.

[15] John Maloof, curator of some of Maier's photographs, summarized the way the children she nannied would later describe her: She was a Socialist, a Feminist, a movie critic, and a tell-it-like-it-is type of person.

[16]In 1959 and 1960, Maier embarked on a solo trip around the world, taking pictures in Los Angeles, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Yemen, Egypt, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Italy, France, and Switzerland.

[25] In October 2009, Maloof linked his blog to a selection of Maier's photographs on Flickr; they became a viral phenomenon, with thousands of people expressing interest.

In June 2014, lawyer and former photographer David C. Deal filed a legal case challenging the rights of current owners of Maier's negatives to commercialize them.

[32] Artist and photography critic Allan Sekula has suggested that the fact that Maier spent much of her early life in France sharpened her visual appreciation of American cities and society.

[17] Maloof has said of her work: "Elderly folk congregating in Chicago's Old Polish Downtown, garishly dressed dowagers, and the urban African-American experience were all fair game for Maier's lens.

"[33] Photographer Mary Ellen Mark has compared her work to that of Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, Lisette Model, and Diane Arbus.

Joel Meyerowitz, also a street photographer, has said that Maier's work was "suffused with the kind of human understanding, warmth and playfulness that proves she was 'a real shooter'.

[35] A critic in The Independent wrote that "the well-to-do shoppers of Chicago stroll and gossip in all their department-store finery before Maier, but the most arresting subjects are those people on the margins of successful, rich America in the 1950s and 1960s: the kids, the black maids, the bums flaked out on shop stoops.

"[27] Most of Maier's photographs are black and white, and many are casual shots of passers-by caught in transient moments "that nonetheless possess an underlying gravity and emotion".

She writes that Maier's work "may add to the history of 20th-century street photography by summing it up with an almost encyclopedic thoroughness, veering close to just about every well-known photographer you can think of, including Weegee, Robert Frank and Richard Avedon, and then sliding off in another direction.

[40] Maloof used the funds received from print sales and his film Finding Vivian Maier to help create the scholarship with the intention for it to be permanent and offered on a yearly basis.

[41] With no application process, the money will be awarded to students not based on degree, enrollment year, or medium they are working within, allowing artistic freedom to the recipients.