Photography Atelier

Nancy A. Nichols

Nancy A. Nichols

Photography in the Age of Digital Reproduction

This is a photography project about photography; about the challenge of making pictures in a society awash in images.

Frustrated and overwhelmed by the sheer number of photos I encountered each day, I yearned to make truly unique images.  For this project, I photographed common household items up close to make them look larger than life, printed them digitally and then hand colored them with pastels and pencils. My goal was to make one-of-a-kind pieces of art out of mass-produced consumer objects—many of which are iconic in their own right.

My work was heavily influenced by an essay written almost 100 years ago entitled The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In this classic 1936 article philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, clearly saw and carefully detailed the dangers that modern printing and photographic processes posed for artists as they began to struggle with something new to them—the near constant reproduction of images of all kinds. Benjamin argued forcefully that something is lost when a handmade piece of art is reproduced by a printing press. He thought that the very act of reproduction reduced the specialness or “aura” of an object. 

To introduce Benjamin’s ideas to a contemporary audience, I asked ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, to elucidate and comment on his article.  A screen recording of that conversation plays continuously on an iPad near the photographs I made—including AI generated advice for restoring the authentic “aura” of an art object. These bot-generated tips stand next to my own efforts to create something unique out of something commonplace; my own effort to make art amidst the constant creation and replication of images and the tsunami of artificiality we all experience every day.

About

Nancy A. Nichols is a photographer, writer, and editor.  She holds an MFA in photography from New England College (2020) and has held editorial positions at The Harvard Business Review and The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. A Critical Mass top 200 photographer, her work has been featured in shows at the Griffin Museum, A. Smith Gallery, and PhotoPlace Gallery.  She is the author of Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town’s Toxic Legacy—a book on the environmental causes of illness. Her next book, Women Behind the Wheel, a history of women and cars, will be published by Pegasus Books in March 2024.

Artist Bio

Nancy A. Nichols is a photographer, writer, and editor.  She holds an MFA in photography from New England College (2020) and has held editorial positions at The Harvard Business Review and The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. A Critical Mass top 200 photographer, her work has been featured in shows at the Griffin Museum, A. Smith Gallery, and PhotoPlace Gallery.  She is the author of Lake Effect: Two Sisters and a Town’s Toxic Legacy—a book on the environmental causes of illness. Her next book, Women Behind the Wheel, a history of women and cars, will be published by Pegasus Books in March 2024.