Charger, Bandhavgarh National Park, India, 1996

Aperture is pleased to release these stunning limited-edition prints by Michael “Nick” Nichols, the acclaimed National Geographic photographer. These prints coincide with the Aperture publication A Wild Life: A Visual Biography of Photographer Michael Nichols. In every one of his images, Nichols touches the very spirit of wildness.

In this photograph, we meet our cover boy, Charger. Nick had learned that National Geographic had wanted to do a story on tigers and he wanted the assignment. For this project, he was in the field for thirteen months altogether—traveling through Russia, Indonesia, and Thailand—but focused his work on the wild tigers in India, where he met the jungle’s dominant male tiger, nicknamed Charger. A Wild Life author Melissa Harris writes of this powerful image of Charger, “His back paws barely touch the rocks as he pushes off from a cliff, weight forward, body outstretched, taut, muscular, front paws seemingly relaxed, his gaze bright and directed upward. The supple grace of the animal’s thrust over the void and his propulsive power is extraordinary: the image practically drips of adrenaline.” Nichols’s tiger portraits are the result of “strategic timing, exasperating trial and error, and gifts of serendipity,” she writes. “Nick is a photojournalist working in a time of crisis. Habitat and species are continually threatened by humans. For nearly thirty years, Nichols has conspired with scientists, naturalists, journalists, and activists to take on these issues. "Wildlife photography" is not the right term to describe what Nick does. Nick approaches his work in this reportorial tradition: he is a photojournalist working in the wild.”

Archival Pigment Print
Paper Size: 11 x 15 3/8 inches
Image Size: 9 3/8 x 14 inches
Edition of 10 and 2 Artist’s Proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist

Michael “Nick” Nichols (b. 1952, Muscle Shoals, Alabama) is an award-winning photographer whose work has taken him to the most remote corners of the world. He began his photojournalism career in 1979, working for GEO magazine. From 1982 to 1995, Nichols was a member of Magnum Photos. He became a staff photographer for National Geographic magazine in 1996 and was named editor-at-large for photography in January 2008. From 1982 to 1995, he was a member of Magnum Photos. His previous books with Aperture are Gorilla (1989), with an essay by George Schaller; Brutal Kinship (2005), with an essay by Jane Goodall; and Earth to Sky: Among Africa’s Elephants, A Species in Crisis (2013). The Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited Wild: Michael Nichols in June 2017, which explored Nichols as an artist, technical innovator, and ardent advocate for preserving natural habitats. He is represented by Steven Kasher Gallery, New York.