Shanghai Meets Chicago, Chicago Meets Shanghai

The kunst.licht gallery in Berlin is presenting works by two artists, documenting in a very intimate manner, life on the streets in different decades, on different continents and under different political systems.

Vivian Maier (1926–2009) grew up in the 1920s in the French Alps and later emigrated to the USA. It was there, in the fifties and sixties, that she began to document America's industrial metropolis, Chicago. Maier took a total of over 100,000 photographs, captured moments that she shared with no one while she was alive. It was only by chance that her photographic legacy was later discovered.

During the time when Maier was wandering through the streets of Chicago, Lu Yuanmin (*1953) grew up in a completely different world, in distant Shanghai. His youth was warped and formed by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and its consequences. However, his experiences during that dark episode of China's history did not stop him from later picking up his camera to lovingly document the lives of normal people. If anything, the events during that time awakened in him a deep passion for the human condition and for the imperfect.

Further information at: Kunst.Licht