Viewers compared her photographs to the work of famous street photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Diane Arbus.
At first, Maloof had sold about 100 of her negatives on eBay. The photographer Allan Sekula told him to stop. The work, Sekula said, was good enough for an exhibition.
In 2011, the Chicago Cultural Center gave her the first solo exhibition of her work in the United States. Her photos were also shown in Denmark, Norway and Germany. Pictures that had sat in storage now hung on gallery walls on two continents.