Obscure Landscape Photographers: Tad Nichols (1911-2000)

Tad Nichols (1911-2000)

While in the US on holiday my wife and I visited one of our favorite bookstores in Bonner's Ferry Idaho Bonner's Books. Highly recommended if you find yourself in the vicinity. This is where I picked up the book The Glory of Our West that I used as the basis for a series of posts here.

On this visit I picked up Ansel Adams’ classic Yosemite and the Range of Light in paperback for $6.00 used hank you very much. One has to be careful in buying photography books because some are printed in truly appalling ways. There were two more books in the bookstore featuring Ansel Adams, one I did not purchase as the tonal range in the printing was awful. The other was better but it featured an identical print to one in Yosemite and the Range of Light and I didn't even recognize them at first as the same print so poor was the reproduction in this other book.

I also stumbled upon an Eliot Porter book Down the Colorado; diary of the first trip through the Grand Canyon, 1869. (This book includes John Wesley Powell's account of floating the Grand canyon for the first time. I recommend this story as a great read.) Always interested in Eliot Porter and having grown up near the Grand Canyon I bought the book ($8.00 in hard copy). This reminded me of another Eliot Porter book I have wanted to own for decades. (The Place No One Knew) (I found one copy online in the UK for £45 where it is easily twice this in the US as the UK probably does not have the same appreciation of Glen Canyon.)

The Place No One Knew I learned about from reading Edward Abbey's classic Desert Solitaire where he describes a river trip down the Colorado at Glen Canyon before Glen Canyon dam drowned it in water and boaters in what is now Lake Powell.

The sad story of the destruction of Glen Canyon is one of failure by the Sierra Club. Originally proposed in 1941, Echo Park Dam was moving ahead by the 1950's. Planned for the Green River (tributary of the Colorado) it would have flooded Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Seeing this as another Hetch Hetchy reservoir (in Yosemite) the Sierra Club opposed it and compromised by allowing a dam at Glen Canyon without, it seems, fully understanding what it had given up. Glen Canyon is arguably a much greater loss in terms of wilderness and beauty than Echo Park. Essentially they wanted to preserve a National Park and Glen Canyon was not part of the National Park system. The Place No One Knew is an ironic name as Glen Canyon was relatively well known but perhaps as a Sierra Club publication they prefer the impression it was unknown.

Eliot Porter floated the river and photographed  the canyon in color. Being the disaster of Lake Powell happened when I was about 1 year old I was intrigued to learn more about what we have missed out on. As it turns out the photographs are classically Porter in terms of being fairly 'intimate' landscapes. While beautiful in their own right they focus on patinas and rock shapes and less on the overall look of the canyons and so from my viewpoint are disappointing. My copy is a 1966 reprint on Kromekote paper.

Eliot Porter at Glen Canyon  (photograph by Tad Nichols NAU Archives)

Accompanying Eliot on this visit was a guide named Tad Nichols. Tad I learned was a veteran river runner on the Colorado and San Juan rivers in the 1950s and 1960's. He was also a filmmaker (government educational films about Native Americans) and photographer I was unfamiliar with. Further research shows he contributed to Arizona Highways and published a number of books.

Tad Nichols on the San Juan River June 1951 with his Rolleicord Camera
(Photo from Arizona Memory Project Archives)

A good friend and companion of Tad was Katie Lee who accompanied him on many of his adventures. She herself was a songwriter and wrote articles and books on her travels in the canyon country of Utah and Arizona as well. Their friendship and Tad's feelings on the Glen Canyon are summed nicely in this conversation that Katie records in two of her books Sandstone Seduction and All my Rivers are Gone.

Like me, Tad says this is the spot. Glen Canyon, this river, has it all.
"Why, Tad-O? [one of Katie's nick names for Tad] What makes it so special?"
He stretches his arms up high, palms up, and almost whispers,
"The light, sweetie, look at the light. It drives me crazy!"
"That all?"
"No, or course not."
"What then?"
"Oh, well, mmm...you know. The canyons, each one full of surprises, the colors, the clarity. Never seen such a variety of texture and form. The shapes are incredible! And the river, so peaceful and quiet, not like the Grand."
"Why does this place make you feel different?"
He stops and looks upriver for a long time, then shaking his head, says, "I don't know, Pal. I really can't tell you why. Maybe it's the silence, the way it pulls you in, the secrets it holds, the ruins. Maybe because it's so...clean., hardly touched. I get a new perspective on photographing things here."
"Everything seems to be lit from within, huh Professor? [Another nickname for Tad.]
"That's a great way to put it, sweetie."
"Heh-heh. I got it from you, Tadito. " [yet another nickname for Tad.]

---Katie Lee  All my Rivers are Gone

Of significance in this instance is his book of photographs on the experience, Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World. Where he records his images and impressions of what we have lost. Copies of this book are rare and expensive as it is now out of print. I tracked down some images in an excerpt in an Arizona Highways retrospective on Lake Powell published in May of 2017. Screenshots of some of his photos are reproduced below to give an idea of what the place was like and his skill as a photographer. (All photographs and captions from the Arizona Highways article) I find the photos are of great composition and careful exposure. They seem to be all from his Rolleicord camera on medium format film.

Mr. Nichols made this photo of the Navajo Bar area in 1957. In a journal entry, he noted the area's stunning views and rock formations

Ferns grow in Grotto Canyon in 1957. “Often times we'd go in a canyon and sit down and absorb it — just live in there,” Mr. Nichols said. “We didn't want to go out again, but we always had to leave.”

 Deep shadows form on the walls of Dungeon Canyon in 1958. “It was so dark in a couple of places, even at midday, that I had to light a match to set the camera speeds,” Mr. Nichols wrote in his journal.

Water pours from a waterfall in Music Temple in 1962. “The last trip before the closing of the dam, Frank [Wright] and I went alone at Thanksgiving time,” Mr. Nichols said. “We camped on the sandbar out in front of Music Temple and had a heavy rain that evening. We went into the temple the next morning, and there was a beautiful waterfall. It was the first time we'd ever seen this.”

“West Canyon was my favorite — peace and beauty and shade in the desert,” Tad Nichols said of this 1958 photo. “It was a place you could walk barefoot. It had a wide sandy bottom, and there was always flowing, falling water, a meandering stream where cattails, reeds, horsetails, and scouring rushes would grow. We would walk on the lovely warm sand by the clear running water.”

A Glen Canyon cliff face dwarfs trees at the canyon's floor in 1957.

Frank Wright stands atop a cliff near Music Temple.

The next set of photos are reproduced from Arizona Highways April 2001 issue in an article entitled Glen Canyon Then and Now. Tad Nichols is quoted from Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World. 

"How can you describe the experience of standing in these places?...It's like standing in a great cathedral. There's spirituality in that. I can't describe it any other way...The last trip before the closing of the dam, Frank and I went alone at Thanksgiving time. We camped on the sand bar out in front of Music Temple and had a heavy rain that evening. We went into the temple the next morning, and there was a beautiful waterfall. It was the first time we'd ever seen this."

Music Temple

Addendum (2023): I recently ran across an article about Dawn Kish a phtographer sho borrowed Tad Nichol's 4x5 Crown Graphic and documented the partial re-emergence of Glen Canyon during the low water period in 2021. Her article and interview are here... Another similar one is here...