“Vivian Maier’s Chicago”

Gifted nanny turned street photographer Vivian Maier seems as much of a stranger as the faces on display in “Vivian Maier’s Chicago” at the Chicago History Museum. But after walking through the exhibition’s single room of 37 portraits that hang, from a steel grid designed to mimic the city in the 1960s and 1970s, I realize the supposed loner was quite a people person, and her subjects—shoppers at Maxwell Street Market, West Side residents post-Martin Luther King’s assassination and families at a Wilmette beach—are familiar faces. These everyday people border the walls in a total of 216 photos. Though it’s doubtful you’ll need help on being transported back to industrial Chicago, composer Kevin O’Donnell’s soundtrack, complete with jazz and the sound of a moving El train, may do the trick.