Self-Portraits brings together the photographs in which Vivian Maier pictured herself from about 1950 into the 1990s, chiefly in New York and Chicago, often in reflections and shadows, camera in hand. Sustained across these decades, the practice was grouped posthumously as a single body of work in a 2013 powerHouse Books volume edited by John Maloof.
Maier appears as a photographer, with the Rolleiflex beside or before her face, but also dissolves into silhouettes and partial reflections. These tensions have supported biographical, existential, and feminist readings centered on self-presentation, solitude, and the female gaze. With no authenticated explanation from Maier, such themes remain interpretations of the photographs rather than a declared program.
The photographs range from direct likenesses to reflections in mirrors, storefront glass, rearview mirrors, tire hubs, and vending machines. Shadows stretch across beaches, sidewalks, grass, clothing, and built environments, while doorways and frames create pictures within pictures. Early French portraits show Maier in coats, blouses, skirts, and pulled-back hair. New York images frequently feature tailored clothing and the square Rolleiflex. Later color works introduce bright garments, newspapers, graffiti, found objects, and bodily substitutes such as hats or clothing. Her expression is generally composed and reserved, with mood conveyed through visual distance rather than overt emotion.
Maier began with a Kodak Brownie and bought a Rolleiflex in 1952. Its waist-level viewfinder and square negative enabled camera-in-hand reflections without fully obscuring her face, while its self-timer offered another route to self-imaging. She also handed her camera to other people for some French and travel portraits. Her black-and-white work was associated largely with Rolleiflex cameras and Kodak Tri-X, while later color photographs used mostly Ektachrome 35mm film with Leica and German SLR cameras. She developed some black-and-white film and prints herself, although many exhibited prints were produced posthumously.
Published with 57 black-and-white and 29 color photographs, the book accompanied Howard Greenberg Gallery's 40-work Vivian Maier: Self Portrait in New York, the first dedicated U.S. gallery presentation and the first U.S. gallery exhibition of her color work. Anne Morin later curated the touring The Self-Portrait and its Double, a format of up to 93 photographs shown from 2018 at institutions in Santiago, Valladolid, Trieste, Helsinki, Brussels, and other European cities. Related presentations included Les Douches la Galerie in Paris in 2020–21, while Morin's exhibition continued to Andorra through March 2025.
