A Wild Life

Legendary nature and conservation photographer Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols’ new book, A Wild Life, is a visual biography of his life. Steve Fairclough spoke to him about his illustrious career

With a career that stretches back almost 40 years and a new biography, Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols is in a reflective mood. His smooth Alabama drawl comes down a phone line from his Virginia home as he admits, ‘I never thought I would have a biography but I thought I would do a retrospective called A Wild Life. I’ve just had a big museum exhibit in Philadelphia – one of the great art museums in the United States. They’ve never exhibited a photographer like me in any way and we’ve mixed my photographs with its permanent collection and added masterpieces that have something to do with the natural world.’

Nichols has been documenting this world since the late 1970s in a career that saw him join the Magnum agency in 1982 and then National Geographic in 1996, from which he retired as editor-at-large in 2016, following a final assignment in Yellowstone National Park. In his early days he was better known as an adventure photographer – noted for photographing spectacular caves and famously dubbed ‘The Indiana Jones of photography’ by Paris Match – but this quickly developed into something deeply rooted in conservation issues and the realisation that the power of his photography could change the minds of key decision makers.

He explains, ‘It’s very interesting where we are with wildlife right now, so the [book] title works on many levels. The [Philadelphia] exhibit was called ‘Wild: Michael Nichols’, so I’m playing with the word wild because I don’t think humans really get it. We like tame much better than we like wild [laughs]. Even people who really love animals really like them to be kind of cute and fuzzy; they don’t want them to be really wild and dangerous.’