Nicholas Nixon

*1947

Influenced by photographers like Edward Weston and Walker Evans, Nicholas Nixon (American, born 1947) began working with large-format cameras. He received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1969 and an MFA from the University of New Mexico in 1975. His first solo exhibition took place at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by John Szarkowski in 1976. His early cityscapes depicting Boston and New York were included in the influential exhibition New Topographics at George Eastman House in 1975. That same year, he began his project The Brown Sisters, consisting of a portrait of his wife and her three sisters. Nixon took one photograph each year, and each year the four women were consistently positioned in the same order left to right; in 2017 it contained 43 portraits. Nixon was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship three times, and twice was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships. He has worked as part-time professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and design since 1975.