Working as a private dealer since 1980, Scott Nichols opened his eponymous gallery in 1992 in San Francisco with a focus on fine art photography and more specifically works by the seminal Group f.64. Housing one of the largest private collections of work by group member American photographer Brett Weston alongside an expansive selection of pieces by photographers ranging from Ansel Adams and Edward Weston to Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cunningham, Scott Nichols Gallery boasts leading expertise on 20th-century image makers connected to California.

After 27 years in downtown San Francisco, Nichols relocated the outfit to Sonoma in the heart of California’s wine country. Reflecting the quieter and community-oriented atmosphere of Sonoma but with the same attention to high caliber and historically significant works of photography, the gallery continues to champion the works of Group f.64 photographers and others to a growing collector base outside the urban hub.

We reached out to Nichols to learn more about how he got his start, and what about the storied Group f.64 continues to excite him today.

Scott Nichols. Photo: Kristy Headley. at the AIPAD Photography Show, standing next to Brad Temkin, Montgomery Pass Mustangs – Mono Basin, CA (2021), and Monica Denevan, Song for Rain, Orinoco Delta, Venezuela (2002). Courtesy of Scott Nichols Gallery.

With it being well over three decades since you opened the doors of your gallery, can you take us back to its founding and tell us a bit about what initially got you into the business?

My undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, was in architecture, though I took a class from William Garnett, and at the end of the class, he asked me if I had work study, and if I could become his studio assistant at Cal for two-and-a-half years. I was basically his scullery maid. I had various photography jobs at Cal, and in one of my last classes in photography, well-known photographers would come in, or we would go visit them. After meeting Brett Weston and Ansel Adams, my direction changed.

What really got me started with the class was going down to Brett Weston’s and Ansel Adams’s studios on a Friday afternoon. Towards the end of the visit with Weston, he said he had student prints available. My financial aid check for $800 had just come in a couple days before so I bought all 16 of the photographs, but they charged me tax which I didn’t have and when I got back to school, I saw that my check had bounced and I called up Brett and all he said was when you come back down, we’ll go photographing and that was the start.

William Garnett, Snow Geese, with Reflection of Sun on Buena Vista Lake (1953). Courtesy of Scott Nichols Gallery.

What prompted moving the gallery from San Francisco to Sonoma in 2019? Has the new location informed or influenced how you or the gallery operates?

My old gallery at 49 Geary was a well-known address in San Francisco for fine art galleries, but the escalating real estate market priced out many galleries in the building and city. People had scattered to new spaces and places. I ended up in Sonoma thinking it would be a viable market.

How would you describe the gallery’s focus? Has this changed or evolved over the years?

I was a private dealer on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco and wanted a place to display the photography I had. I evolved from showing traditional California photographs and, over time, adding European masters. Subsequently, I started showing young local photographers as well.

Brett Weston, Mendenhall Glacier (1973). Courtesy of Scott Nichols Gallery.

With an expertise in Group f.64, can you talk about what about this group’s work that you find most fascinating? Is there anything about them that you think is overlooked, or that most people might not know?

What excites me about group f.64 is that they were the modern radicals of the period that first exhibited as a group in 1932. They were doing clear focus straight photography, which was a marked departure from Pictorialism of the times.

Being grouped in the Bay Area was a wonderful experience because the group would meet in Oakland periodically. In the ’70s and ’80s, many of the young of those young photographers and their extended families lived close by with their children and grandchildren of the artist. They were all very accessible with lots of knowledge to share with the next generations.

I also think that Weston, who was very popular at the time, never really got his due because he lived in the shadow of his father’s fame and notoriety. Yet, Weston was considered the father of negative space, believing that the negative space was a positive element in the photograph.

Ansel Adams, Antelope House Ruin, Canyon de Chelly, National Monument, AZ (1942; Printed 1974). Courtesy of Scott Nichols Gallery.

Can you tell us about one of either the gallery’s current or forthcoming exhibitions?

The biggest thing on the near horizon is the upcoming AIPAD Photography Show in New York City.

Do you have any perennial advice for collectors of photography, either seasoned or new to collecting the medium?

Condition is not always the most important thing in consideration in purchasing a photograph. Sometimes those little imperfections add to the uniqueness of the photo.

Buy what you like.  Make sure you don’t buy something that you fall out of love with in a couple of days.

Learn more about Scott Nichols Gallery here.