Nicholas Nixon
Commercial Wharf, Boston

Commercial Wharf, Boston

© 1975 Nicholas Nixon; courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Commercial Wharf, Boston
Commercial Wharf, Boston
ArtistAmerican, born 1947
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Commercial Wharf, Boston
Date1975
Place depictedBoston, Massachusetts, United States
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 7 11/16 × 9 11/16 in. (19.5 × 24.6 cm)
Sheet: 8 × 9 15/16 in. (20.3 × 25.2 cm)
Credit LineBequest of Morgan Garwood
Object number2014.184
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
DescriptionAfter moving to Boston in 1974, Nicholas Nixon took his camera to rooftops as a way to learn his new city, capturing views with great clarity using a large-format camera, an approach he soon expanded to include New York City and other sites. A year later, he began his best-known body of work, an ongoing series of annual portraits of his wife and her three sisters. While he is best known for portrait series of schoolchildren, the elderly and ailing, and his family, Nixon has continued to step back, both literally and metaphorically, to focus his lens on the changing urban landscape as a structural counterpoint to the personal scale of his portraits.
ProvenanceMorgan Garwood, New York; bequeathed to MFAH, 2014.
Exhibition History“A Critical Eye: Mid-Century American Photographs from the Morgan Garwood Collection,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, July 23–November 2, 2014.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
verso bottom left in pencil "View of Boston from Commercial Wharf 1975"
upper left edge in ink reading vertically "8006"
verso bottom right in pencil "Nicholas Nixon:

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