This 2 minute 39 second video is the official trailer for the upcoming documentary, “Finding Vivian Maier.” It tells the story of one of the greatest photography finds in recent history, and of the brilliant work of a photographer no one had heard of just a decade ago.
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Vivian Maier, Photographer is a beautiful short film about the life and work of Vivian Maier, the unknown amateur photographer whose massive collection of street photographs was discovered at an estate sale after her death.

In the summer of 2010 we were asked by curator Jeffrey Goldstein if we could create a short film using images and 8mm film shot exclusivly by the now famous nanny / street photographer.

Armed with a couple hundred scanned images and hours of digitized 8mm film, we began to lay elements out to gather a sense of what was really being reveled. This along with some investigative research played into a wonderful script and an energetic performance that hopefully sheds a little light the mysterious and life of Ms. Maier.

(via DEVELOP Tube)

Frank Oscar Larson was an auditor living in Queens back in the 1950s who had a passion for street photography. Every weekend he would travel around the city armed with his Rolleiflex camera, photographing the things that caught his eye. After Larson died of a stroke at the age of 68 in 1964, his photographs quietly sat in a cardboard box for 45 years before finally being discovered by his son’s widow in 2009. They offer a beautiful look into what life in NYC was like half a century ago.
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One of the big stories in the photo world last year was when a set of glass negatives purchased for $45 at a garage sale were found to potentially be Ansel Adams photos worth an estimated $200 million. Unfortunately for the finder, the photos were most likely not Ansel’s, and ensuing lawsuits prevented him from making a huge profit from the find. Real estate agent John Maloof, on the other hand, could end up making a fortune from his discovery of previously-unknown nanny and street photographer Vivian Maier.
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In 2007, 26-year-old real estate agent John Maloof purchased a box filled with 30,000 negatives from an estate sale for $400. After being stunned by the quality of the street photographs, Maloof began digging and discovered that they were created by a nanny and street photographer named Vivian Maier. He then decided to purchase the other boxes of negatives, bringing his collection of Maier photos up to about 100,000 images. Now some are saying he might have discovered one of the greatest (and previously unknown) street photographers of the 20th century. You can view some of Maier’s photographs here.

Next time you’re at an estate sale, you might want to take a closer look at any boxes of negatives you come across.

Thanks for the tip lebigz!