Patrick Richmond Nicholas, Sicily, 2023
Spent a number of years after leaving school trying to find his way in the world, moving through a curious arc from military to art school. He travelled and worked widely in North and Central America. He finally settled down to studying photography and cinema in London, graduating in 1977. His first job after University was as assistant editor for the then little-known director Ridley Scott. He was sacked after three months for running the rushes of the film “Alien” upside down; shortly afterwards he decided that the film industry was not for him, nor he for it.
Footloose and fancy-free again, he spent a year in Cairo working for Egypt’s first advertising agency in the post-soviet era before chancing upon a job that took him to Italy for a week – he has been there ever since.
He started working in Italy in the early 80s as seaside photographer before setting up his own studio in Bologna as a fashion and advertising photographer in 1988. As a relief from purely commercial photography he embarked upon the series that later he was to call the BELLE – a series of tableaux inspired by painting, sculpture, and occasionally music and cinema, using non-professional, unpaid models of all ages and types.
The Photo Nicholas Gallery, Orvieto
In 2007 he turned his back on commercial photography altogether to strike out into unknown territory by setting up his own photo gallery in the small jewel that is Orvieto, on the borders of Tuscany, Latium and Umbria. Of late, he has combined more and more landscape and figure in a uniquely Tuscan vision. He still has to create an image inspired by “Alien” – the cause of his downfall over forty years ago.
Aside from showing his work in his own galleries, he has exhibited widely: London, Paris, Amsterdam (photo below), Rome, Prague, Bologna, Melbourne
He is the founder of Camera Etrusca (www.cameraetrusca.com), residential photography courses based in the stunningly beautiful Umbrian city of Orvieto, in central Italy.
Chat with Patrick
