Legal battle threatens to hide famous pictures from art world

Vivian Maier was a nanny and housekeeper in Chicago who took pictures in her spare time. Those photographs, mostly from the 1950s and 60s, are now considered some of the best street pictures ever taken, but they went undiscovered until two years after her death, in 2011.

Now, a legal battle is threatening to hide them from the world indefinitely, CBS News' Anthony Mason reports.

Maier's work has been displayed in galleries around the world.

Much of that is because of John Maloof, the owner of 100,000 of Maier's negatives, but a legal dispute is questioning whether Maloof owns the copyright to Maier's photos.

"It has become my life's work for last six years," Maloof said. "Nobody really knows where all of this is going to land. I'm confident that somebody is going to be fair here and work out something so that I can continue doing what I'm doing with her archive and then the world gets to continue to enjoy her photographs."

In late 2007, Maloof paid just $400 for a box of Maier's negatives at an auction.

"My mission is to put Vivian in the history books," Maloof told CBS News in 2011.

Maloof now says he owns around 90 percent of her collection. His search for more information on the previously unknown photographer, chronicled in the documentary film "Finding Vivian Maier," uncovered just one heir, who he says agreed to share the profits from sales of her work.

"I initially had this reaction that what Mr. Maloof was doing was just not right," said attorney David Deal.

Deal, a former photographer, has been studying Maier's story closely. Deal says he's found another relative to Maier in France and petitioned Cook County, Illinois, which handles Maier's estate.

"It seemed like he went almost immediately into this mode where - 'How can I monetize this? How can I make this work for me?'" Deal said.

The public administrator in Cook County is warning of possible lawsuits over commercial sales of Maier's photographs.

Maloof says he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing and archiving the prints and bringing Maier's story to light.

"To do it the right way takes a lot of time and a lot of money," Maloof said. "There's no quick way to archive 100,000 negatives and no cheap way. I'm happy to work out something, if we have to. I want to make sure that the work doesn't go back into a trunk."