Thanks for the compliment, Rob, but I think this lady's work is remarkable. My copy of the first book out of Ms. Maier's pictures just arrived, but my wife insists I wait until Christmas to open it. In the meantime, thanks to the coverage Brooks Jensen gave her in the most recent LensWork, and the posts Michael's put in this thread, I get to see enough of Maier's work to understand we've found another great street photographer.
There are two things I notice about Vivian Maier's work:
First, I'm blown away by the fact she was doing all this with a Rollei. Weegee was out there with his Speed Graphic, but he was a police reporter first and foremost, so he didn't have to try to be inconspicuous. Seeing what Maier did makes me feel more comfortable about the times I'm out on the street with a D3.
But second, and probably more important, as I looked at Maier's work it struck me for the first time that there's a feminine approach to street photography that's quite different from the masculine approach. I've got a couple of Helen Levitt's books, at least one of Dianne Arbus's, and some of Dorothea Lange's street work scattered among various publications, but it just never struck me before that women take a different approach to the street than do men. How's that for a revelation? ... Well, I guess it isn't, but I've never really noticed it before.