Vivian Maier

[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.

Vivian Maier show in Dunker Culture House in Helsingborg 2016.
Rue Vivian Maier in Paris.