Nicholas Nixon (born October 27, 1947) is an American photographer, known for his work in portraiture and documentary photography, and for using the 8×10 inch
view camera.
Influenced by the photographs of
Edward Weston and
Walker Evans, he began working with large-format cameras. Whereas most professional photographers had abandoned these cameras in favor of shooting on 35 mm film with more portable cameras, Nixon preferred the format because it allowed
prints to be made directly from the large format negatives, retaining the clarity and integrity of the image. Nixon has said "When photography went to the small camera and quick takes, it showed thinner and thinner slices of time, [unlike] early photography where time seemed non-changing. I like greater chunks, myself. Between 30 seconds and a thousand of a second the difference is very large."[1]
Nixon's subjects include schoolchildren and schools in and around Boston, people living along the Charles River near Boston and Cambridge as well as cities in the South, his family and himself, people in
nursing homes, the
blind, sick and dying people, and the intimacy of couples. Nixon is also well known for his work People With AIDS, begun in 1987. Nixon recorded his subjects with meticulous detail in order to facilitate a connection between the viewer and the subject.
In 2021, The Galerie le Château d’Eau presented the first major exhibition of Nixon’s work in France, an ambitious survey accompanied by an expanded catalog.
On March 22, 2018, Nixon retired from the
Massachusetts College of Art and Design in mid-semester just after an investigation into alleged
inappropriate behavior was announced. The investigation focuses on whether his conduct violated
Title IX rules. The Boston Globe has also been investigating the professor since the beginning of 2018 for claims of
sexual harassment. The paper interviewed more than a dozen former students who claimed the photographer asked undergraduate students to pose nude for him and made vulgar remarks in a classroom setting.[3][4]
On April 12, 2018, the
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston decided to close an exhibition of Nixon's photographs ten days early after the museum earlier said they would keep the exhibition on view following the report by the Boston Globe. Nixon asked the museum to cancel the exhibit immediately.[5] In 2021, the suit was settled, resolving the formal complaints against Nixon.
Nicholas Nixon: Pictures of People, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, 1989
Human Experience: Photographs by Nicholas Nixon, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH, 2001
Nicholas Nixon: The Brown Sisters 1975-2008, The Alhambra, Granada, Spain, 2009
Nicholas Nixon: Family Album, Museum of Fine Art Boston, July 28, 2010 – May 1, 2011[6]
Nicholas Nixon: Forty Years of The Brown Sisters, Museum of Modern Art, Nov 22, 2014 – Jan 4, 2015[7]
Nicholas Nixon. Fundacion Mapfre, Madrid, September 14, 2017 – January 7, 2018, traveling to
C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany and Fondation A Stichting, Brussels, Belgium