Nicholas Nixon Knihy

An early associate of the New Topographics movement, Nicholas Nixon (born 1947) achieved fame for his widely exhibited ongoing project The Brown Sisters (begun in 1975), for which he has made one black-and-white portrait per year of four sisters, one of whom is Nixon's wife. Nixon's Live, Love, Look Last brings together similarly intimate photographs from the past decade. Each of the series presented-Nixon's family, couples, Boston cityscapes and critically ill patients-originated as a project of its own, but Nixon soon realized that the four independent series collectively articulated his continual effort to simply render life's most intimate moments, and so has gathered them here. Nixon brings a moving candor to his sense of portraiture, and takes care to strike a balance between "on the one hand, getting the picture I want, and on the other, having [his subjects] like the experience. I don't want them to feel like I've taken anything they don't want to give me." Unflinchingly honest in his approach, Nixon explores the relationships between individuals and their environment, and how these bonds are affected by birth and death.

Dieses Buch erscheint als Begleitband zu einer umfassenden Retrospektive mit ungefähr 200 Fotografien von Nicholas Nixon (* 1947 in Detroit), der eines der kraftvollsten und persönlichsten fotografischen OEuvres der letzten Jahrzehnte geschaffen hat. Nixon drückt sich in einer poetischen Stimme auf unverkennbare und zutiefst einzigartige Weise aus, unberührt von den Zwängen zeitgenössischer Kunstströmungen und eng verbunden mit der Wirklichkeit und dem Leben. Er kehrt zurück zur Idee von Kunst als einer Beschreibung, die verstanden, geteilt und erinnert werden kann; so entwickelt er einen nachdenklichen Dialog und erschafft ein Werk, das uns verstören, Sehnsüchte wecken, zum Nachdenken anregen und verwandeln kann. Nixons Fotografien stehen insofern in der Tradition der sozial orientierten Dokumentarfotografie. Gleichzeitig demonstriert sein Werk auf bemerkenswerte Weise, wie die traditionellen Mittel der Fotografie – Großformatkamera, Schwarz-Weiß-Film und Kontaktbögen – dazu dienen können, in bislang unerforschtes künstlerisches Terrain vorzustoßen. Dieses Buch bietet einen chronologischen Überblick auf der Grundlage der wichtigsten Fotoserien des Künstlers; es schließt mit der bekannten Werkgruppe über die Brown Sisters, die er im Lauf der letzten 40 Jahre geschaffen hat.

Nicholas Nixon is known for the ease and intimacy of his large format photography. He has photographed porch life in the rural South, the changing Boston cityscape, sick and dying people, the intimacy of couples, and an ongoing annual portrait of his wife Bebe and her three sisters, beginning in 1975. Included in the seminal 1975 exhibition “New Topographics”, Nixon is major figure in American photography of the latter half of the twentieth century. In Close Far, Nixon presents a dichotomous group of photos made with his signature large-format view camera, in this case one with an 11x14 inch negative. The first half of the book contains self-portraits, comprising in Nixon’s words “sketches of an old man”. Filled with anxiety, longing and contentedness, these images chronicle the shapes, slopes and pores of Nixon’s face. The second half of the book shows views of buildings in the densest part of Boston. Made from high within the buildings and with the same camera, these images without horizons do not gaze down upon but rather “through” the city. With the lens in the same orientation as his self-portrait photos, Nixon’s results are remarkable for their richness of detail and complexity of form.