|
Nicholas Nixon
Following his completion of an MFA at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he began to photograph local architecture and the desert landscape with a large-format, 8 x 10-inch camera alongside fellow student John Schott, Nicholas Nixon moved to Boston in 1975. Shown in New Topographics were studies of the Boston area, depicting the coexistence of old and new and the complexity of urban space. Nixon's self-assigned series alludes to nineteenth-century photographic tradition by virtue of elevated vantage point and descriptive detail, reflecting the photographer's abandonment of a graduate student flirtation with irony, when he wrote a thesis entitled Ironic Vision in Twentieth-Century Photography. Notwithstanding the productive artistic outcome a more neutral pictorial stance would hold for his subsequent work, Nixon concluded at this time: “The world is infinitely more interesting than any of my opinions concerning it. This is not a description of a style or an artistic posture, but my profound conviction.”
1. VIEW OF STORROW DRIVE, THE RIVER STREET BRIDGE, AND THE MASSACHUSETTS TURNPIKE, BOSTON, 1975 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. Museum Purchase with National Endowment for the Arts support. George Eastman House collections. © Nicholas Nixon.
2. BUILDINGS ON TREMONT STREET, BOSTON, 1975 Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. Museum Purchase with National Endowment for the Arts support. George Eastman House collections. © Nicholas Nixon.
3. VIEW OF THE JOHN F. KENNEDY FEDERAL BUILDING, BOSTON, 1975. Gelatin silver print 8 x 10 in. George Eastman House collections. © Nicholas Nixon.
Audio excerpt generously provided by the Department of Photography at Columbia College Chicago, which hosted Mr. Nixon as part of their Photographers Lecture Series, fall 2008.
|
Nicholas Nixon on launching his career as a photographer in Boston.
ROBERT ADAMS
LEWIS BALTZ
BERND AND HILLA BECHER
JOE DEAL
FRANK GOHLKE
NICHOLAS NIXON
JOHN SCHOTT
STEPHEN SHORE
HENRY WESSEL, JR.
|
