Since November 6, the Wrocław BWA has been hosting an exhibition of photographs entitled “I Wish I Was a Yellow Dog” by American photographer Lora Webb Nichols. The exhibition was opened on the occasion of and under the patronage of the American Film Festival. The ground for its creation was an extraordinary meeting of the exhibition’s co-curator, writer Dominika Prejdová with Lora’s close friend Nancy Anderson, who is still living in Encampment. “I Wish I Was a Yellow Dog” is, as Prejdová puts it, “a journey through life and death”. During this journey, one can see a dozen or so large-scale prints with photos of the residents of Encampment of the first half of the 20th Century. It was them that Lora Webb Nichols preferred most to photograph.

The exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to recall the figure of this exceptional artist, who, although she led a modest, hard life, is an example not only of a wonderful documentary photographer, active at the dawn of the history of mass photography, but also of an independent woman, a proto-feminist.

Lora Webb Nichols was born in 1883 in Boulder, Colorado, a town of 100,000 citizens. When she was still a little girl, her family moved to Wyoming, where they settled in the newly established small settlement of Encampment, or rather – as a pioneer family – built it, together with other families, from scratch. Back in 1899, when she was sixteen, Nichols received a camera as a gift from her future husband. She quickly discovered her great passion in photography. From then on, the camera was an inseparable companion at every phase of her life.

Photography was also a way for Lora to earn money. She ran her own photography studio and darkroom. She took pictures for herself and on commission, but she also developed photos she received. She kept more interesting negatives to herself, describing them in detail. In this way, she created a huge community photographic archive of the inhabitants of those areas. She became particularly involved in photo finishing when Eastman Kodak would not grant her a license to take commercial portraits. 

Although photography was Lora’s job and passion, it was not her only activity. Trying to feed her six children, she dabbled in various jobs. She worked at the post office. She published a local newspaper. She ran her own soda fountain bar. Lora was an independent woman. She put all the real estate she bought in her name only. She had her own income, which was not common for women in such small towns at the time. When her first husband turned out to be violent, she divorced him. When things didn’t work out with her second husband – her cousin – she left him too. “She used to say she wanted privacy, peace and living income”, Dominika Prejdová tells me.

In 1935, Lora left Encampment and her second husband and moved to Stockton, California. As Dominika Prejdová tells me, “it was really her only way to save herself. That’s what she wrote in her diaries. She was really exhausted. She would work non-stop. At night she would develop photos, during the day work, cook and take care of the children. She had had enough.” Lora’s decision was also influenced by the Great Depression of the 1930s, which forced her to sell the newspaper, as well as depression after the death of her beloved mother. In California, Lora took a job in an orphanage. She started as a cook but over the years she was promoted and eventually became the director of the facility.

Towards the end of her life, Lora returned to Encampment to take care of her two sons, who were struggling with mental health problems. After returning, she started cataloguing her collections. In this way, she meticulously described her entire collection of over 24,000 photographs.

At the same time, she became close friends with a girl from the neighborhood, Nancy Anderson. Lora and Nancy, despite the decades that separated them in age, found an unusual bond. They spent a lot of time together. It was Nancy who was one of the people who accompanied Lora to her deathbed in 1962. After Nichols passed away, Anderson took care of her photographic collection. It is thanks to her that the photographer’s legacy has survived to this day and became known.

Lora’s photography gained worldwide fame in 2020, when art curator Nicole Jean Hill, who also helped in saving Lora’s archive, published a book with a selection of Nichols’ photographs, “Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899–1948”. Work is currently underway to publish a selection of Lora’s diaries, which she wrote from the age of thirteen until her death (the last entry is from the evening before her passing). 

The images that can be seen in Lora’s photographs are a testament to America in the first half of the twentieth century. They are photographs of people who lived in Encampment, who passed through the town in search of copper during the ongoing boom in this raw material. “What is important about her photography is that there is no purpose in her photographs. There is no ideology in them. These are portraits of poor people, but their poverty is not the purpose of taking these photographs. This intimacy, this trust – because people trusted her very much – is visible in these frames. This is probably the most wonderful thing.” – says Prejdová. Lora captured – partly unconsciously – a unique, unknown world. The world of the real “wild west”, although Wyoming is not close to Texas or Arizona in terms of landscape – it snows there for most of the year.

The exhibition can be viewed until February 23, 2025. [https://bwa.wroc.pl/en/event/i-wish-i-was-a-yellow-dog/].

All photos credited to the American Heritage Center.