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Nicholas Blair: Prodigal Photog Returns
by Doniphan Blair
The cover for Nicholas Blair's new book of photographs from powerHouse Books. photo: N. BlairPLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
NICHOLAS BLAIR, WHO GOT HIS MFA
from the now-defunct San Francisco Art Institute forty years ago and co-directed the innovative Ancient Currents Gallery, returns to San Francisco to launch his new book, “Castro to Christopher: The Gay Streets of America, 1979-1986”. It documents the enthusiastic emergence of queer culture in that period but also its tragic decimation by AIDS/HIV. The book release interview/party will be at Fabulosa Books (489 Castro St, SF), at 7pm, Tuesday, July 11th.
Blair got interested in photography as a kid. "We would discuss composition, lighting, and the image’s narrative,” Blair writes on his website about his father, Vachel Blair (see article), a cinematographer, who studied film in Paris on the GI Bill. “In particular Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘The Decisive Moment’.”
He also learned to do dark room work in high school from renown documentary photographer Melissa Shook—“I was a thorn in her side,” he recalled—but didn’t begin his life-long dedication to street photography until returning from a year’s travel in South America. That was when a friend, Anna Reinhardt, lent him the small, professional Leica camera once belonging to her father, Ad Reinhardt, the abstract painter but also dedicated world traveler.
A highly personal and mystical photograph from Haiti, 1984. photo: N. BlairAn early, interesting body of work emerged from Blair’s trip to Mexico in 1977. It was shown at Ancient Currents Gallery, which operated at 2205A Pine Street, San Francisco, from 1976 to 1987, under the tripartite mandate to display tribal art, artists from the Global South and American artists influenced by those aesthetics. While in Mexico, Blair collected the yarn paintings of the Huichol tribe, near Nayarit, Mexico, which became Ancient Currents’ bestselling show.
He lived in the commune behind the gallery, the Modern Lovers, where he built a dark room. A community of eight to fifteen people, it was dedicated to the arts and to a balanced lifestyle, including serving a healthy vegetarian dinner every night to all comers, which it did for over a decade.
After the 1978 murder of Harvey Milk, a city council member but also photography store owner, and the political upheaval across San Francisco, but especially in the Castro neighborhood, Blair realized something important was happening and set about documenting it.
By that time, he had become involved in the San Francisco Art Institute, introduced by his friend Larry Bair, who studied with Gary Winograd in Texas and came to San Francisco specifically to study with Henry Wessel, both nationally recognized photographers. After auditing Wessel’s classes, Blair applied to and was accepted in the SFAI Masters degree program, although he didn’t graduate high school or college.
Blair and Bair, who eventually came out as bi, would go out almost every weekend and some weekdays, avidly shooting all over San Francisco but coming to focus on the gay scene. Studying with Hank and Larry, he writes on his site, “I [perfected] a method of candid street photography that entailed pre-focusing the camera before quickly bringing it to my eye and releasing the shutter.”
Start of his 1980 hitchhike to Mexico, with then girlfriend Pammie Congdon, doing street photography and collecting Huichol tribal art. photo: L. BairBecause he was from New York and periodically returned, he also started shooting Manhattan’s Christopher Street, the nearby pier on the Hudson River, Provincetown, Massachusetts, and other gay meccas.
Some have noted that Blair is not gay, hence an outside observer to the community. But the Modern Lovers had gay residents, including Nancy “Strut” Hedeen, the actual founder of Ancient Currents, and the gallery’s dedication to tribal culture helped develop ideas on how to accept a community on its own terms while still exploring a personal vision.
Unfortunately, Blair moved back to New York before his extensive body of “gay work” could be edited and printed, let alone shown at Ancient Currents, where he became the curator of photography. He did, however, organize shows for some great local photographers, notably Linda Conner, Jack Fulton and Larry Sultan. He also published pieces in San Francisco’s gay newspaper, Bay Area Reporter, where he had a weekly series, the national gay magazine, The Advocate, and the French magazine Gai Pied Hebdo.
Although he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Jerome Foundation, and his work was eventually collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, Brooklyn Museum and Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, he had limited success getting a teaching position and shows in the 1980s. Hence, he decided to follow his father into cinematography and was soon traveling the world for CARE, National Geographic, the Disney Channel and other outfits. Shooting stills during his off-time, he garnered great images in Haiti, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and elsewhere.
Filming in Brazil for a documentary about indigenous healing techniques, 2004. photo: D. BlairHe also started doing more commercial work and producing his own investigative documentaries. The latter included “Culture of Crash”, about the demolition derbies enacted each summer at county fairs and completed in 1998, and “Our Holocaust Vacation”, about his mother, a Holocaust survivor, which was shown over 500 times on PBS between 2008 and 2011.
The "gay book project," meanwhile, languished until 2019, when he dusted off his boxes of negatives and started the years'-long project of scanning and sorting. With the help of Gary Halpern, another SFAI photographer, whom he actually met in South America in 1974, and John Glenn, a New York video producer for whom he shot a lot of projects, he created a book proposal and a book, which, after many submissions, was picked up by powerHouse Books, a premiere photo book publisher.
It has gotten glowing reviews, notably in The Guardian, from the New York music and art critic Jim Farber, who also interviewed Blair at New York’s Rizzoli Books in June, for his book release there. Farber has commented on a couple of occasions that Blair’s outsider status drew him away from focusing on the pretty boys, who might have caught a gay photographer’s eye, and towards the graphics and overall content, including the many lesbians in those scenes.
A striking photo from 'Castro to Christopher' shows Blair's ability to document difficult moments: this one at a Castro pride parade in the early '80s. photo: N. BlairCurrently, Blair, 67, continues to run a video production company in New York, while living on its Upper West Side. He also travels extensively, often to visit his son, Stefan, 25, who works for MicroSoft in Seattle, or help his daughter, Willa, 22, set up house for her first job, after graduating from Binghamton University, as an archeologist for the Forest Service in Oregon.
Overall, “Castro to Christopher” is a triumph of both Blair's dedication to street photography but also Ancient Currents' innovative ethos about investigating tribal cultures as equals. His next book project will cover either his eye-opening trip to India in 1978 or similarly scintillating life at the Modern Lovers commune.
Posted on Jul 11, 2023 - 10:39 AM
by Doniphan Blair
The cover for Nicholas Blair's new book of photographs from powerHouse Books. photo: N. BlairNICHOLAS BLAIR, WHO GOT HIS MFA
from the now-defunct San Francisco Art Institute forty years ago and co-directed the innovative Ancient Currents Gallery, returns to San Francisco to launch his new book, “Castro to Christopher: The Gay Streets of America, 1979-1986”. It documents the enthusiastic emergence of queer culture in that period but also its tragic decimation by AIDS/HIV. The book release interview/party will be at Fabulosa Books (489 Castro St, SF), at 7pm, Tuesday, July 11th.
Blair got interested in photography as a kid. "We would discuss composition, lighting, and the image’s narrative,” Blair writes on his website about his father, Vachel Blair (see article), a cinematographer, who studied film in Paris on the GI Bill. “In particular Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘The Decisive Moment’.”
He also learned to do dark room work in high school from renown documentary photographer Melissa Shook—“I was a thorn in her side,” he recalled—but didn’t begin his life-long dedication to street photography until returning from a year’s travel in South America. That was when a friend, Anna Reinhardt, lent him the small, professional Leica camera once belonging to her father, Ad Reinhardt, the abstract painter but also dedicated world traveler.
A highly personal and mystical photograph from Haiti, 1984. photo: N. BlairHe lived in the commune behind the gallery, the Modern Lovers, where he built a dark room. A community of eight to fifteen people, it was dedicated to the arts and to a balanced lifestyle, including serving a healthy vegetarian dinner every night to all comers, which it did for over a decade.
After the 1978 murder of Harvey Milk, a city council member but also photography store owner, and the political upheaval across San Francisco, but especially in the Castro neighborhood, Blair realized something important was happening and set about documenting it.
By that time, he had become involved in the San Francisco Art Institute, introduced by his friend Larry Bair, who studied with Gary Winograd in Texas and came to San Francisco specifically to study with Henry Wessel, both nationally recognized photographers. After auditing Wessel’s classes, Blair applied to and was accepted in the SFAI Masters degree program, although he didn’t graduate high school or college.
Blair and Bair, who eventually came out as bi, would go out almost every weekend and some weekdays, avidly shooting all over San Francisco but coming to focus on the gay scene. Studying with Hank and Larry, he writes on his site, “I [perfected] a method of candid street photography that entailed pre-focusing the camera before quickly bringing it to my eye and releasing the shutter.”
Start of his 1980 hitchhike to Mexico, with then girlfriend Pammie Congdon, doing street photography and collecting Huichol tribal art. photo: L. BairSome have noted that Blair is not gay, hence an outside observer to the community. But the Modern Lovers had gay residents, including Nancy “Strut” Hedeen, the actual founder of Ancient Currents, and the gallery’s dedication to tribal culture helped develop ideas on how to accept a community on its own terms while still exploring a personal vision.
Unfortunately, Blair moved back to New York before his extensive body of “gay work” could be edited and printed, let alone shown at Ancient Currents, where he became the curator of photography. He did, however, organize shows for some great local photographers, notably Linda Conner, Jack Fulton and Larry Sultan. He also published pieces in San Francisco’s gay newspaper, Bay Area Reporter, where he had a weekly series, the national gay magazine, The Advocate, and the French magazine Gai Pied Hebdo.
Although he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Jerome Foundation, and his work was eventually collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, Brooklyn Museum and Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, he had limited success getting a teaching position and shows in the 1980s. Hence, he decided to follow his father into cinematography and was soon traveling the world for CARE, National Geographic, the Disney Channel and other outfits. Shooting stills during his off-time, he garnered great images in Haiti, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and elsewhere.
Filming in Brazil for a documentary about indigenous healing techniques, 2004. photo: D. BlairThe "gay book project," meanwhile, languished until 2019, when he dusted off his boxes of negatives and started the years'-long project of scanning and sorting. With the help of Gary Halpern, another SFAI photographer, whom he actually met in South America in 1974, and John Glenn, a New York video producer for whom he shot a lot of projects, he created a book proposal and a book, which, after many submissions, was picked up by powerHouse Books, a premiere photo book publisher.
It has gotten glowing reviews, notably in The Guardian, from the New York music and art critic Jim Farber, who also interviewed Blair at New York’s Rizzoli Books in June, for his book release there. Farber has commented on a couple of occasions that Blair’s outsider status drew him away from focusing on the pretty boys, who might have caught a gay photographer’s eye, and towards the graphics and overall content, including the many lesbians in those scenes.
A striking photo from 'Castro to Christopher' shows Blair's ability to document difficult moments: this one at a Castro pride parade in the early '80s. photo: N. BlairOverall, “Castro to Christopher” is a triumph of both Blair's dedication to street photography but also Ancient Currents' innovative ethos about investigating tribal cultures as equals. His next book project will cover either his eye-opening trip to India in 1978 or similarly scintillating life at the Modern Lovers commune.
Posted on Jul 11, 2023 - 10:39 AM
