Nicholas Nixon's Family Pictures

It isn’t easy to find pictures from Nicholas Nixon’s Family Pictures online. Nixon is well-known for his pictures of AIDS patients, of school children, and for The Brown Sisters, but it seems that his family pictures remain in relative obscurity.

Which is unfortunate. I obtained a copy of this monograph a few months back, and I’m moved by it. These are pictures of his wife, Bebe, and his children Sam and Clementine. The pictures are warm, loving, and funny at times. These are more than portraits; these are scenes from life around the Nixon home when his two children were very young.

Amazingly, Nixon made these photographs with an 8x10 camera. 8x10. I’ve tried making portraits of my son with my 4x5 before, and wasn’t too successful at it. I would expect it to be much more difficult with an 8x10, particularly since these aren’t pictures in which Nixon’s children are posed before the camera. Longer lenses. More bulk. Longer exposures, in all likelihood. And energetic subjects, to say the least. But Nixon knows what he wants. He’s after the beauty of an 8x10 contact print, a sentiment I understand completely.

Somehow Nixon pulls it all off with grace in this charming little publication. Highly recommended for all parents with any interest in photographing their children.

A little introspection

The cover of Friedlander's second volume of self-portraits

I’ve begun a very exciting project that has reinvigorated my creativity, is always accessible, and is just plain fun. Partially inspired by Lee Friedlander’s two volumes of self-portraits, published about 30 years apart, I’ve started photographing myself with a 35mm camera, using a 24mm lens to produce a wide view, typically held at arm’s length. I try to photograph myself in some creative way or another every day. Sometimes I’ll stand in front of signs that seem relevant to my current situation (as at the intersection of Court and Church streets in Salem), sometimes I’ll photograph my shadow and legs on the ground in front of me, and sometimes I’ll simply point the camera at myself during my commute home after work. It has been a lot of fun so far, trying to see myself in new and unusual ways. Yesterday Delaney was asleep in the car’s back seat when we arrived at Troy’s preschool, so I slid into the seat next to her, put my face up next to hers, closed my eyes, pointed the camera at us, and snapped the shutter without waking her. It was cute.

My long-term intent is to do this as a sort of visual diary. By photographing myself every day, I hope to look back in time some day to see how I looked during certain milestones in my life, good and bad. Some day I’ll have a thorough visual record of my changing appearance over time, and by logging my feelings and thoughts each day (which I’m also doing), I hope to have a very introspective record of myself. I’ve described this project to my doctor, and he seemed to think it’s a good idea. And it feels like an artistic one, to boot. I’ve also described it to my favorite living photographer, and he said that it’s a “wonderful idea,” and that perhaps I could contact print several frames of negatives as strips on large boards, complete with the film’s sprocket holes. Sprocket holes included; now why didn’t I think of that?

I’ve burned six rolls of film so far, and I’m averaging about half a roll a day. There’s sure to be some good stuff in there, and I eagerly seek out opportunities to keep shooting each day.

On another note related to introspection, I’ve been reading some “success stories” recently of people who have dealt with depression and succeeded anyway. Yesterday I finished William Styron’s Darkness Visible, and I’m currently reading Lincoln’s Melancholy, How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. I find such success stories fascinating, and even more so when written by the depressives themselves. And I’m proud that I find myself able to keep my former condition at bay and actually use it for good, as a growth experience.