SLIDES, 1960-2000
Series
Scope and Content
From the Collection:
John Nichols' papers document a wide range of history and culture and personal connections in New Mexico (and elsewhere) over the last 55 years. This all-inclusive collection contains almost every draft of every manuscript Nichols has written, and every piece of correspondence that he has sent and received since the late 1950s. The collection not only documents the creation and evolution of his literary works, but precisely documents the literary process. His correspondence, speeches, and artwork chronicle contemporary political and social issues and shed light not only on John Nichols, but also illuminate the perspectives of a large array of contemporary literary, political, and everyday figures and issues in New Mexico and around the globe.
Activities, 1970-2008: These files include speeches, political organizing, trips, magazine articles, and many other projects and activities undertaken by Nichols.
Articles, 1969-2007: Contain various newspaper and magazine articles about John Nichols and his books.
Artwork, 1969-2004: Sketchbooks, drawings and cartoons by John Nichols. Significant works including a complete set of pen and ink calavera drawings, artists proofs, and etchings of calaveras done to illustrate The Magic Journey; published and unpublished political cartoons, mostly done during the 1970s for Albuquerque's alternative newspaper, Seer's Catalogue, and illustrations and cartoons done for Hamilton College's track & field newsletter The Good Scout.
Book Reviews, 1965-2007: Published reviews of John Nichols' books.
Book/Film Contracts, 1964-2012: Xerox copies of some of the main contracts Nichols has signed for book publishing, film options, and screen-writing assignments. With a few magazine and journal and audio recording pufferies thrown in.
Book/Movie/Agent Correspondence, 1963-2007: This consists of files of correspondence between Nichols and agents, editors, publishers, producers, directors, production people, and others involved with his professional life of writing books and screenplays.
Correspondence 1950s-1960s, 1950-2012: This series contains letters from Nichols' teenage years, while at Hamilton College, and then living in New York City until 1969. Later correspondence is often included, the criteria being that the letter exchanges began in the 1950s or 1960s.
Envelope Diaries, 1998-2002: Envelope diaries and field observations played a huge role in creating Nichols' literature. He kept a record of hikes on the backs of envelopes and carefully typed up these transcripts afterwards. Once he began carrying a little tape recorder that was the end of the envelope diary field notes.
Eulogies, 1980-2007: Written by John Nichols for some of his departed friends.
Fan Letters, 1969-2011: Consist mainly of letters to Nichols, mostly from strangers, commenting on his books or other projects, and of carbons of some of his typed replies to these letters from strangers.
General Correspondence, 1970-2012
Jouranl/Diary Ephemera, 1955-1966: Ephemera connected to Nichols' life between age 15-26, during prep school and college and a few years after college.
Journal/Diary Files, 1956-2007: Nichols has kept journals off and on since age fifteen.
Manuscripts, 1957-2012: This series contains nearly every draft of every title that John Nichols wrote between 1957 and 2012. Notable titles include "The Sterile Cuckoo" and the New Mexico Trilogy: "The Milagro Beanfield War," "The Magic Journey," and "The Nirvana Blues."
Memorabilia, 1968-1997: Hermes Rocket typewriter used to type Milagro, and Olympia typewriter used to type manuscripts from 1974 until 1997, when Nichols finally began using the computer.
Miscellaneous Carbons, 1964-2009: These are carbon copies of business and personal letters, typed by Nichols and not matched up with correspondence files elsewhere.
Novel Notes, 1961-2006: Notes that Nichols scribbled in notebooks and on the backs of envelopes. He often wrote dozens of variations on a theme in notebooks trying to get a handle, find a starting point.
Phone Messages, 1987-2007
Photographs, 1955-2013: This is a cross-section of photographs of Nichols, his family and friends, lots of photographs related to publicity for his books, or hiking mesas and climbing mountains.
Photography Workshops in Taos, 1988-1998: Nichols' friend sponsored the Owens Valley Photography Workshops (begun in 1975) for many years. The workshops catered to serious, and usually large-format, photographers in the mold of Ansel Adams and others of his ilk. Nichols guest lectured at the workshop for 10 summers, beginning in 1988.
Pocket Notebooks, 1980-2010: Things to do, lists, notes for novels, field notes when hiking, random thoughts, and so forth.
Publications, 1959-2007: Magazines and newspapers containing articles by or about Nichols. This includes prep school and college literary magazines, the Hamilton Spectator and New Mexico Review.
Request Letters, 1970-2012: Mostly letters from people asking John Nichols to "do stuff," like read their books, blurb their books, find them a publisher, come and speak to their class, do a workshop, contribute books for their benefit auction, etc.
Royalty Statements,1965-2011
Screenplays, 1965-2004: Includes screenplays, drafts, and edited drafts of screenplays written by Nichols, or written by others as adaptations of Nichols' works. Notable titles include "Missing" and "The Milagro Beanfield War."
Slides, 1960-2000: Most of the slides were taken between 1973 and 1995, primarily in and around Nichols' Taos home, in Taos proper, or around the immediate Taos valley and western mesas, or on some of the small streams southeast of Taos or in the mountains of Taos County.
Videos 1984-2013: This is a collection of videos include interviews or documentariesJohn Nichols has done I've done or documentaries I've done, or have been included in.
Activities, 1970-2008: These files include speeches, political organizing, trips, magazine articles, and many other projects and activities undertaken by Nichols.
Articles, 1969-2007: Contain various newspaper and magazine articles about John Nichols and his books.
Artwork, 1969-2004: Sketchbooks, drawings and cartoons by John Nichols. Significant works including a complete set of pen and ink calavera drawings, artists proofs, and etchings of calaveras done to illustrate The Magic Journey; published and unpublished political cartoons, mostly done during the 1970s for Albuquerque's alternative newspaper, Seer's Catalogue, and illustrations and cartoons done for Hamilton College's track & field newsletter The Good Scout.
Book Reviews, 1965-2007: Published reviews of John Nichols' books.
Book/Film Contracts, 1964-2012: Xerox copies of some of the main contracts Nichols has signed for book publishing, film options, and screen-writing assignments. With a few magazine and journal and audio recording pufferies thrown in.
Book/Movie/Agent Correspondence, 1963-2007: This consists of files of correspondence between Nichols and agents, editors, publishers, producers, directors, production people, and others involved with his professional life of writing books and screenplays.
Correspondence 1950s-1960s, 1950-2012: This series contains letters from Nichols' teenage years, while at Hamilton College, and then living in New York City until 1969. Later correspondence is often included, the criteria being that the letter exchanges began in the 1950s or 1960s.
Envelope Diaries, 1998-2002: Envelope diaries and field observations played a huge role in creating Nichols' literature. He kept a record of hikes on the backs of envelopes and carefully typed up these transcripts afterwards. Once he began carrying a little tape recorder that was the end of the envelope diary field notes.
Eulogies, 1980-2007: Written by John Nichols for some of his departed friends.
Fan Letters, 1969-2011: Consist mainly of letters to Nichols, mostly from strangers, commenting on his books or other projects, and of carbons of some of his typed replies to these letters from strangers.
General Correspondence, 1970-2012
Jouranl/Diary Ephemera, 1955-1966: Ephemera connected to Nichols' life between age 15-26, during prep school and college and a few years after college.
Journal/Diary Files, 1956-2007: Nichols has kept journals off and on since age fifteen.
Manuscripts, 1957-2012: This series contains nearly every draft of every title that John Nichols wrote between 1957 and 2012. Notable titles include "The Sterile Cuckoo" and the New Mexico Trilogy: "The Milagro Beanfield War," "The Magic Journey," and "The Nirvana Blues."
Memorabilia, 1968-1997: Hermes Rocket typewriter used to type Milagro, and Olympia typewriter used to type manuscripts from 1974 until 1997, when Nichols finally began using the computer.
Miscellaneous Carbons, 1964-2009: These are carbon copies of business and personal letters, typed by Nichols and not matched up with correspondence files elsewhere.
Novel Notes, 1961-2006: Notes that Nichols scribbled in notebooks and on the backs of envelopes. He often wrote dozens of variations on a theme in notebooks trying to get a handle, find a starting point.
Phone Messages, 1987-2007
Photographs, 1955-2013: This is a cross-section of photographs of Nichols, his family and friends, lots of photographs related to publicity for his books, or hiking mesas and climbing mountains.
Photography Workshops in Taos, 1988-1998: Nichols' friend sponsored the Owens Valley Photography Workshops (begun in 1975) for many years. The workshops catered to serious, and usually large-format, photographers in the mold of Ansel Adams and others of his ilk. Nichols guest lectured at the workshop for 10 summers, beginning in 1988.
Pocket Notebooks, 1980-2010: Things to do, lists, notes for novels, field notes when hiking, random thoughts, and so forth.
Publications, 1959-2007: Magazines and newspapers containing articles by or about Nichols. This includes prep school and college literary magazines, the Hamilton Spectator and New Mexico Review.
Request Letters, 1970-2012: Mostly letters from people asking John Nichols to "do stuff," like read their books, blurb their books, find them a publisher, come and speak to their class, do a workshop, contribute books for their benefit auction, etc.
Royalty Statements,1965-2011
Screenplays, 1965-2004: Includes screenplays, drafts, and edited drafts of screenplays written by Nichols, or written by others as adaptations of Nichols' works. Notable titles include "Missing" and "The Milagro Beanfield War."
Slides, 1960-2000: Most of the slides were taken between 1973 and 1995, primarily in and around Nichols' Taos home, in Taos proper, or around the immediate Taos valley and western mesas, or on some of the small streams southeast of Taos or in the mountains of Taos County.
Videos 1984-2013: This is a collection of videos include interviews or documentariesJohn Nichols has done I've done or documentaries I've done, or have been included in.
Dates
- 1960-2000
Language of Materials
From the Collection:
English
Access Restrictions
The collection is open for research, however, researchers must sign consent form prior to gaining access to materials. Calavera drawings, proofs, and etchings as well as "little diaries" (Boxes 14, 125, 126, 129, 142) are housed in high security and may require up to 24 hours for retrieval. Enlarged photocopies and typed transcriptions of "little diaries" in Box 142 are located in Box 184.
Extent
From the Collection: 184 boxes (172 cu. ft.)
General
Note: Comments and description provided by John Nichols.
General
Pictures made between 1960 and 2000. Most of the slides were taken between 1973 and 1995 in New Mexico. There are a handful of very early slides of bullfights in Spain (summer of 1960), and of my and wife Ruby's honeymoon in Maine (in 1965). Also of working on a film in Florida (1983) and in New York (1984). Trips to Nicaragua (1983); a book tour for American Blood (1987); trip to Wyoming (1983, 1991). And a N.J. striped bass fishing day with my best friends, Alan Howard and Mike Kimmel, on June 10, 1991. Otherwise, most photos were taken in and around my Taos home, in Taos proper, or around the immediate Taos valley and western mesas, or on some of the small streams southeast of Taos or in the mountains of Taos County.
I published a book called If Mountains Die in 1979 that was accompanied by great photographs by my friend and neighbor, William Davis. Bill's beautiful pictures inspired me to take up a camera, buy a tripod, and have at it myself, since I tended to meander all over Taos County, hiking, hunting, fishing, just wandering--you name it. And, after the experience of If Mountains Die, I became interested in doing more non-fiction photo essays as well as writing novels.
I never learned much about cameras or the technology involved. I used a Nikon FE camera with a 20 mm lens, a 35 mm lens, and an 80-200 lens. I used a polarizing filter for one or two rolls of film and then quit using any filters at all after that. I bracketed a lot. And used mostly Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 film, and sometimes Ektachrome. I had very little technical skill or imagination. Ansel Adams is famous for saying the secret to photography is "F8 and be there." That was my creed.
Much of the time I was simply taking snapshot of the areas I was in. Slides taken between 1973 and 1979 are just point and shoot, with no effort to apply "art" to the process. Around 1980 I started to think about taking decent photos to accompany another non-fiction essay book, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn. Some of the photos published in that book are decent, many are very mediocre.
In time, I concentrated mostly on the West Mesa of Taos on the other side--the western side--of the Río Grande Gorge, in what is known as the Cerros de Taos (Two Peaks), Tres Orejas (Three Peaks), and Carson areas. For a while these were my preferred stomping grounds when hardly anyone lived out there and I could roam the sagebrush and the gullies and climb Tres Orejas mountain at will, almost never meeting another human being. Those days are long gone now.
You might say I became "The World's Foremost Authority on Photographing Tiny Stock Ponds." I wanted the stock pond pictures to be part of another non-fiction book to be called On The Mesa. Eventually, I published On The Mesa, but the publisher wasn't interested in printing the book with 70 or 80 color shots from that sagebrush plain, so my book only had some black and white pictures on chapter headings throughout.
I published my own photos in a few magazine articles, and in the books The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn, On The Mesa, A Fragile Beauty, The Sky's the Limit, and Keep It Simple. Some of the photographs in these books are lovely; many, to be charitable, are "not exactly up to snuff." I snapped a lot of pictures in order to get a few that I felt were okay.
Between 1998 and 2010 my attention turned to the high mountains near Taos where I spent a decade hiking regularly above tree limit. I carried my Nikon FE for a few years up there, but the camera and lenses were heavy, especially added to a spotting scope and tripod and the equipment needed to hike up high in steep and brutal terrain and volatile weather. My hikes were serious endurance tests, so eventually I jettisoned the weight of my Nikon for cheap lightweight point-and-shoot cameras I could simply fit in my pocket. I took many pictures with those cameras up in the mountains of the Wheeler Wilderness Area, particularly in the Williams Lake alpine bowl. But the pictures were basically just a journal of my hikes, a record of the weather, change of seasons, etc. Their purpose was to record the landscape but not beatify it. Almost none of those pictures were slides, and only a handful of them appear in this collection. I have a file cabinet filled with photo packets from those mountain hikes, but they aren't due the CSWR until I complete a photo-essay book on the mountains, or drop dead. Frankly, I'm betting I'll drop dead first.
I pretty much quit taking pictures when the last photo lab in Taos shut down its business and the world went digital. That was a sad day for me. I gave up on film with no place, anymore, to have it developed. To date, I have not learned how to function in the digital world. I know nothing about Adobe Photo Shop but maybe I'll learn. Obviously, at age 73, I'm a dinosaur and these pictures hail from my dinosaur world, photographed long ago.
When I began to organize the slides into these archival boxes they were all jumbled up in 70 Kodak Carrousels (capable of holding 140 slides each) and in aproximately 250 little yellow Kodak mailing boxes (which contained 20 or 36 slides, depending). Most yellow mailing boxes held 36 slides. It was a nightmare doing an inventory of all these pictures and then trying to organize the individual slides into semi-coherent order. It took me most of the year 2013 and a few months of 2014. I spent forever with 3 light tables on my kitchen table sorting through images, staring at them through a loup, tossing away many slides, and trying to make sense of the rest. A Sisyphian, tedious, task.
There was no point in triaging slides down to just a few standouts. That task would have taken forever. In the end I treated the collections of slides as "manuscripts," and I included many of the images in various sequences even if only a few of the images seemed of "acceptable" quality. To recall Ansel Adams again, I believe he once said that it was a "good" year if he got 12 decent images. Many of my slides, even those of poor quality, I left in because of their informational value. The pictures as a whole represent a kind of diary. However, perusing all of them is not for the faint of heart, given how few of the pictures are actually quality shots. You could say that most of this collection is much ado about nothing. Was it worth the effort to save and "organize" them? Who knows? Going through them might be like watching an 8-hour Andy Warhol movie of the Empire State Building.
I have retained several hundreds of the slides as candidates for a possible final photo-essay book. When this book comes about, or proves to be a no-go, I'll return those slides to this collection. They are all marked with Slide Box # and Sleeve # also.
I had no time to air-blast the slides, so they appear filthy. But I find that if you give each of them a couple of puffs from a can they clean up great. I do note that the minute you put a dirty slide into a clean slide sleeve, that sleeve pocket itself becomes dirty also.
So it goes.
In the end this collection is made up of 47 archival slide boxes containing anywhere from 10 to 20 slide sleeves in each box, and with varying amounts of slides in the pockets of each sleeve. The sleeves hold 20 slides apiece. God knows how many slides are in this collection overall. I've tried to mention, haphazardly, where a slide contained in a series of images displayed here actually appeared in one of my books.
NOTE: Slide Box 47 actually contains no slides. Rather it has two sleeves (#s 1 and 2) of correspondence between me and Beth Silbergleit of the CSWR at UNM throughout the duration of this project. And there follow 9 sleeves filled with my organizational notes during the process of trying to herd these cats (transparencies) into some semblance of order. They are obviously the notes of a seriously handicapped organizer!
I published a book called If Mountains Die in 1979 that was accompanied by great photographs by my friend and neighbor, William Davis. Bill's beautiful pictures inspired me to take up a camera, buy a tripod, and have at it myself, since I tended to meander all over Taos County, hiking, hunting, fishing, just wandering--you name it. And, after the experience of If Mountains Die, I became interested in doing more non-fiction photo essays as well as writing novels.
I never learned much about cameras or the technology involved. I used a Nikon FE camera with a 20 mm lens, a 35 mm lens, and an 80-200 lens. I used a polarizing filter for one or two rolls of film and then quit using any filters at all after that. I bracketed a lot. And used mostly Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 film, and sometimes Ektachrome. I had very little technical skill or imagination. Ansel Adams is famous for saying the secret to photography is "F8 and be there." That was my creed.
Much of the time I was simply taking snapshot of the areas I was in. Slides taken between 1973 and 1979 are just point and shoot, with no effort to apply "art" to the process. Around 1980 I started to think about taking decent photos to accompany another non-fiction essay book, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn. Some of the photos published in that book are decent, many are very mediocre.
In time, I concentrated mostly on the West Mesa of Taos on the other side--the western side--of the Río Grande Gorge, in what is known as the Cerros de Taos (Two Peaks), Tres Orejas (Three Peaks), and Carson areas. For a while these were my preferred stomping grounds when hardly anyone lived out there and I could roam the sagebrush and the gullies and climb Tres Orejas mountain at will, almost never meeting another human being. Those days are long gone now.
You might say I became "The World's Foremost Authority on Photographing Tiny Stock Ponds." I wanted the stock pond pictures to be part of another non-fiction book to be called On The Mesa. Eventually, I published On The Mesa, but the publisher wasn't interested in printing the book with 70 or 80 color shots from that sagebrush plain, so my book only had some black and white pictures on chapter headings throughout.
I published my own photos in a few magazine articles, and in the books The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn, On The Mesa, A Fragile Beauty, The Sky's the Limit, and Keep It Simple. Some of the photographs in these books are lovely; many, to be charitable, are "not exactly up to snuff." I snapped a lot of pictures in order to get a few that I felt were okay.
Between 1998 and 2010 my attention turned to the high mountains near Taos where I spent a decade hiking regularly above tree limit. I carried my Nikon FE for a few years up there, but the camera and lenses were heavy, especially added to a spotting scope and tripod and the equipment needed to hike up high in steep and brutal terrain and volatile weather. My hikes were serious endurance tests, so eventually I jettisoned the weight of my Nikon for cheap lightweight point-and-shoot cameras I could simply fit in my pocket. I took many pictures with those cameras up in the mountains of the Wheeler Wilderness Area, particularly in the Williams Lake alpine bowl. But the pictures were basically just a journal of my hikes, a record of the weather, change of seasons, etc. Their purpose was to record the landscape but not beatify it. Almost none of those pictures were slides, and only a handful of them appear in this collection. I have a file cabinet filled with photo packets from those mountain hikes, but they aren't due the CSWR until I complete a photo-essay book on the mountains, or drop dead. Frankly, I'm betting I'll drop dead first.
I pretty much quit taking pictures when the last photo lab in Taos shut down its business and the world went digital. That was a sad day for me. I gave up on film with no place, anymore, to have it developed. To date, I have not learned how to function in the digital world. I know nothing about Adobe Photo Shop but maybe I'll learn. Obviously, at age 73, I'm a dinosaur and these pictures hail from my dinosaur world, photographed long ago.
When I began to organize the slides into these archival boxes they were all jumbled up in 70 Kodak Carrousels (capable of holding 140 slides each) and in aproximately 250 little yellow Kodak mailing boxes (which contained 20 or 36 slides, depending). Most yellow mailing boxes held 36 slides. It was a nightmare doing an inventory of all these pictures and then trying to organize the individual slides into semi-coherent order. It took me most of the year 2013 and a few months of 2014. I spent forever with 3 light tables on my kitchen table sorting through images, staring at them through a loup, tossing away many slides, and trying to make sense of the rest. A Sisyphian, tedious, task.
There was no point in triaging slides down to just a few standouts. That task would have taken forever. In the end I treated the collections of slides as "manuscripts," and I included many of the images in various sequences even if only a few of the images seemed of "acceptable" quality. To recall Ansel Adams again, I believe he once said that it was a "good" year if he got 12 decent images. Many of my slides, even those of poor quality, I left in because of their informational value. The pictures as a whole represent a kind of diary. However, perusing all of them is not for the faint of heart, given how few of the pictures are actually quality shots. You could say that most of this collection is much ado about nothing. Was it worth the effort to save and "organize" them? Who knows? Going through them might be like watching an 8-hour Andy Warhol movie of the Empire State Building.
I have retained several hundreds of the slides as candidates for a possible final photo-essay book. When this book comes about, or proves to be a no-go, I'll return those slides to this collection. They are all marked with Slide Box # and Sleeve # also.
I had no time to air-blast the slides, so they appear filthy. But I find that if you give each of them a couple of puffs from a can they clean up great. I do note that the minute you put a dirty slide into a clean slide sleeve, that sleeve pocket itself becomes dirty also.
So it goes.
In the end this collection is made up of 47 archival slide boxes containing anywhere from 10 to 20 slide sleeves in each box, and with varying amounts of slides in the pockets of each sleeve. The sleeves hold 20 slides apiece. God knows how many slides are in this collection overall. I've tried to mention, haphazardly, where a slide contained in a series of images displayed here actually appeared in one of my books.
NOTE: Slide Box 47 actually contains no slides. Rather it has two sleeves (#s 1 and 2) of correspondence between me and Beth Silbergleit of the CSWR at UNM throughout the duration of this project. And there follow 9 sleeves filled with my organizational notes during the process of trying to herd these cats (transparencies) into some semblance of order. They are obviously the notes of a seriously handicapped organizer!
Repository Details
Part of the UNM Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections Repository
Contact:
University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections
University Libraries, MSC05 3020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque NM 87131
505-277-6451
University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections
University Libraries, MSC05 3020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque NM 87131
505-277-6451