CRUEL SEASON

JOHN NICHOLS

 

It’s a little more complicated than that but you get the idea. Before you can take a picture you have to be able to see it. What being a photographer does for me is let me wander around in my reality in a heightened sense of awareness. I see art everywhere I look. Sometimes I capture a portion of it to pass along. Most of the time I fail.

 

The camera sees things a little differently than the human eye. Neither what the camera sees nor what the eye sees is reality. Get over that. The camera is a tool to help us approach the nature of reality. All art mediums have the potential to do that.

 

At some point the viewer has to step up and open their own eyes a little wider and soak up the transmission from the artist. Not all paintings are art and not all photographs are either. Not all viewers are alike in what they can perceive. Most of the time we barely grasp a wisp of meaning. Photography can be messier than painting. That’s why more people collect paintings than photographs.

 

In order to better communicate some of my views I constantly study techniques. I learn new skills and acquire new equipment. I practice daily. I read, view and think about photos. Then I don’t think about all that and I just allow myself to push a button.

 

Photographs by John Nichols are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Ventura County, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Univ. of Austin, Texas, the Jackson Wheeler Collection (promised gift to the Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard), The Santa Paula Art Museum, the City of Ventura and numerous private collections. Selected exhibits include the Santa Paula Art Museum, the California Oil Museum, the Museum of Ventura County, Ojai Art Center, Ojai Valley Museum, Annual Santa Paula Art and Photography Show, Carnegie Art Museum and others.