Nicholas Nixon

Plus: Boston as a photography town






















From my review of “Nicholas Nixon: 8x10 and 11x14" at Carroll and Sons:

Photographer Nicholas Nixon of Brookline first burst onto the scene in the show "New Topographics." The 1975 exhibit at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, became known as a benchmark for the way it rounded up 10 artists to map a trend in landscape photography toward dispassionate, detached, understated, decidedly unromantic observation. Nixon's contribution included black-and-white photos of Boston cityscapes that he began taking from downtown rooftops after he moved here in 1974.

"I just sort of dealt with Boston like it was mountains and hillsides," Nixon tells me over the phone. They tend to be open uninflected vistas, showing the expanse of the city with skyscrapers jutting up here and there.

"Nicholas Nixon: 8x10 and 11x14," a then-and-now show at Carroll and Sons gallery, assembles a selection of this work alongside Boston cityscapes that Nixon has shot over the past decade. It's a welcome opportunity to catch up with the man who may be the city's most nationally renowned artist.

Read the rest here.

“Nicholas Nixon: 8x10 and 11x14,” Carroll and Sons, 450 Harrison Ave., April 2 to May 9, 2009.

Pictured at top: Nicholas Nixon, "View of State Street Bank, Boston," 2002.