Exhibition - Nicholas Nixon: Ginkgo

Robert Klein Gallery is pleased to present “Ginkgo”, a solo exhibition of new work by renowned photographer Nicholas Nixon, at 38 Newbury Street, Boston. Known for his deeply intimate and humanistic work, Nixon turns his lens toward the natural world in this latest body of work, focusing on the quiet, majestic and almost healing presence of trees. The exhibition invites viewers to experience the beauty, resilience, and complexity of trees in and around Boston, captured with Nixon’s signature precision and sensitivity over the last five years. This exhibition also marks the first time Nixon has exhibited digitally captured and printed photographs alongside his signature 8x10” large format silver gelatin prints.

Best known for his Brown Sisters series (1975-2022) and for his candid portrayals of people and places, Nick Nixon’s exploration of trees offers a new perspective on his approach to time, life cycles, and impermanence. These large-format photographs capture the nuanced textures, light, and intricate details of trees in all their forms—solid, delicate, vibrant, and weathered.

“After reading Peter Wohlleben’s ‘The Hidden Lives of Trees’, I was very moved by evidence of trees communicating and healing and protecting one another that I began to have have a mystical feeling about them, that they are ancient observers which possess the ease and grace that we strive for in our lives. Silent witnesses to our failing efforts, to our folly,” Nixon says.

Though Nixon is widely celebrated for his portraits, "Ginkgo" highlights his talent in capturing the natural landscape, focusing on trees as both subjects and symbols of time, endurance, and beauty. The exhibition features a series of photographs taken over the last several years in the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, offering a reflection on the local landscape and the significance of trees in urban and suburban spaces. In a new departure from his established practice of working with large format film cameras, Nixon also employs for the fist time a monochrome digital camera and digital pigment printing to exhibit alongside his darkroom prints.

“For the last five years I’ve photographed mostly trees. I used to think that as a subject they were too easy, sitting ducks. Spending time with some special ones and looking very hard I began to feel their power. I first brought my big camera to the Longwood Mall in Brookline, Massachusetts, a small two block long park with Beech trees up to 200 years old, and began to feel as well as see them. I liked the pictures right away and went to photograph them every day for over a year, except when I was developing the film and printing the negatives. After the Beeches were finished I went to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, also a neighbor, and began to fill my ground glass with Ginkgo trees, ancient residents originally from China. There is one hillside where roughly 25 live close together. Their stillness and poise fill my spirit just standing among them. Again I went nearly every day, with no plan other than to be really there among them. On the upper side of the hill is a large group of Apple and Crabapple trees, which started another cycle of witnessing their force, their bounty, their shapes... their kindness.” -- Nick Nixon, 2024.