Hundreds turn out for Logan Gallery Opening

“See All About It,” the inaugural exhibit of the Reva and David Logan Gallery of Documentary Photography showcases Maier’s obsessive but secretive photography.

Starting in the late 1940s, Maier, an unmarried nanny in Chicago, obsessively took more than 100,000 photographs documenting everyday life in the mid-twentieth century. Not seen until she died in 2009, her work soon became a worldwide Internet sensation. She is now considered one of the century’s most accomplished street photographers. The photos in the gallery in North Gate Hall capture Chicago’s once-thriving newspaper scene.

While Maier’s work has been exhibited around the world, her elegant but gritty street photojournalism is being shown for the first time in Northern California, which appears to be in the midst of Maier mania. Maier photos are on display at a commercial San Francisco gallery, and screenings of the film, “Finding Vivian Maier” are scheduled in April in Berkeley, San Francisco and elsewhere in the region.

The Logan Foundation gift includes a donation to the Logan Photographic Book Collection, valued at more than $700,000, and $3.1 million for an endowed professorship and gallery. The goal is to bring the photo book collections to life for scholars and the public. The funds will provide a permanent endowment to promote documentary photography and photojournalism at the journalism school and the UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. This is the foundation’s second major gift to the campus.

The exhibition at the Reva & David Logan Gallery of Documentary Photography will be on view in the halls of the J-School through May 1, 2014.