6. The Locker Full of Negatives
In 2007, a young Chicago historian named John Maloof went to an auction of the contents of a repossessed storage locker. He was looking for neighborhood photos for a book. He paid $380 for a box of negatives.
The box held tens of thousands of black-and-white frames shot by a nanny named Vivian Maier, who had quietly photographed Chicago and New York street life for decades and shown them to almost nobody.
At first the negatives went into a closet. When Maloof finally developed some of them, he realized he was looking at the work of a master. He tracked down more of her belongings from the same auction until he held a collection of roughly 100,000 negatives.
There is no single price tag here, because the value is in the whole body of work. Maier’s photographs now hang in galleries and museums, and the documentary about her discovery, Finding Vivian Maier, was nominated for an Oscar.