Everday life

I snuck into town at lunchtime to see the Vivian Maier photographs on display at one of the private galleries. For those of you not familiar with Vivian Maier, hers is a wonderful story. She was a reclusive, eccentric nanny from Chicago who was also a prolific street photographer. Using a Rollieflex, she captured everyday life in her home city and New York, from the 1950s until her death in 2009.

But what is so extraordinary is that she was a complete unknown until after her death, when a real estate agent bought her 30,000 negatives on a hunch and found that he had stumbled on a pot of photographic gold. The limited edition prints in today's small but perfectly formed collection were selling for £1300 - £2500 per piece.

She is now accepted into the canon of great photographers who have documented everyday life, and I do wonder what they would make of the typical scene presented in today's blip.