Michael Nichols (photographer)

Biography

Nichols was born in 1952 in Alabama. After studying at the University of North Alabama, where he met his mentor, former Life magazine photographer Charles Moore, Nichols began his photojournalism career in 1979, working for GEO magazine. Three years he later became a member of Magnum Photos where he worked until 1995 with its founders Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. Starting from 1989 he has published more than 30 articles for the National Geographic and the same year was in collaboration with Jane Goodall to publish a book called Brutal Kinship.

Later on, he traveled to Central Africa where he met with biologist J. Michael Fay and then went to Gabon where he visited 13 national parks, including the Ndoki forest which was featured in one of the NatGeo articles and in his The Last Place on Earth book. In 2012, he traveled to Tanzania on an assignment to document the life of lions in the Serengeti.

In November 2015, it was announced that Nichols would be one of around 180 lay-offs from National Geographic in the run-up to the magazine's acquisition by Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox. Having been a staff photographer there since 1996 and editor-at-large since 2008, Nichols explained in interview that he was preparing to retire at the start of 2016, but expressed regret for other colleagues losing their jobs and that he did not understand why the staff cuts were deemed necessary.

Publications

Awards

Personal life

Nichols lives in Sugar Hollow, Virginia with his wife, artist Reba Peck,.