- Artnet’s Important Photographs sale is led by a single lot consisting of 206 sold-out prints from the estate of Vivian Maier.
- Estimated to sell for $1–1.5 million, the trove could reset Maier’s secondary market.
- Important Photographs is live for bidding through March 26, 2026.
In 2007, a real estate developer named John Maloof bought the contents of an unclaimed Chicago storage locker at auction. The seemingly innocuous purchase yielded one of the most significant troves of amateur photography ever to be discovered—more than 100,000 negatives and slides shot by Vivian Maier. Alongside her day job as a nanny, she quietly created an extraordinary body of street photography charting America’s changing social fabric from the 1950s through to the 1980s. She died penniless, unable to keep up payments for the storage locker that would prove to be a treasure trove, and unknown for her artistic talents.
After learning of Maier’s death in 2009, Maloof began uploading her images to Flickr, and ignited a firestorm of interest. Maier captured images of society women and slums with equal reverence, and her work is now among the most esteemed in the field of photography, seen alongside that of titans like Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand.
Now, more than 15 years after Maier’s chance rediscovery, a rare trove of 206 sold-out estate prints is coming to market on Artnet Auctions as part of the Important Photographs sale—and with an estimate of $1–1.5 million, the sale could mark a turning point for the market around her work.
“Maier’s secondary market is still relatively new,” Artnet’s head of photographs, Susanna Wenniger said. The estate only began releasing prints in 2011, and each was limited to an edition of 15. “If a print is sold out, it means it is no longer available in any of her galleries and can only be found on the secondary market,” Wenniger noted. “So it is very rare to get access to all of the prints, from all the editions that are currently sold out.”
A Collection of 206 Sold-Out Estate Prints, 1950–1980, from the Estate of Vivian Maier. Courtesy of Artnet Auctions.
Market Momentum
Described as a “real, live Mary Poppins” caregiver, Maier was more comfortable in the company of children than with other adults. Traversing city streets, she was able to weave seamlessly through the crush of urban life. After her death in 2009 and Maloof’s discovery, attention on Maier grew. She was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary in 2013, and included in scores of gallery shows and international exhibitions at institutions including Seoul’s Sungkok Art Museum in 2015 and Paris’s Musée du Luxembourg in 2021.
Though embraced as a critical darling and extolled by fellow street photographers Joel Meyerowitz and Mary Ellen Mark, her secondary market is only just beginning to gain traction. To have such a large collection of works sold as a single lot, Wenniger emphasized, is nothing short of a boon for the lucky buyer. “It means that they get access to images by Vivian Maier that no one else has access to any longer at approximately half of the retail asking price for those sold out images.”
In recent years, Maier’s market has been climbing steadily with total sales increasing over 1,173 percent between 2019 and 2024. According to Artnet’s Price Database, the top five most expensive individual prints by Maier sold at auction have fetched between $5,418 and $12,500. The cache of 176 gelatin silver prints and 30 archival pigment prints for sale at Artnet Auctions, comprised of both black and white and color prints, is a remarkable cross-section of Maier’s oeuvre.
Vivian Maier, Untitled (1953). Courtesy of Artnet Auctions.
An Enigmatic Presence
What is it about Maier’s prints that are so mesmerizing? In a time when rediscovered female artists are de rigeur, her biography stands apart. Though she died in poverty and obscurity, Maier left behind a rich and deeply moving body of work. “She was driven to go out onto the streets wherever she was and do something profoundly meaningful” Wenniger said. “She captured people in their most vulnerable and exposed moments, revealing universal truths about mankind. She was unbelievably prolific and dedicated to street photography, despite her own lack of resources.”
Many of the photographs are also subtle self-portraits—we see the artist reflected in car mirrors, shards of glass, and shop windows. In others, her silhouette casts a shadow across the pavement, appropriate for a woman who lived on the periphery, but missed nothing. To own these prints, Wenniger noted, “is an unusual privilege to have access to, and is much more than the sum of its parts.”
The Important Photographs sale is live on Artnet Auctions through March 26, 2026