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CEPT Archives: New Acquisition | John D. Nicolais

03.04.2017

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CEPT Archives is pleased to announce the new Acquisition of John Dorio Nicolais’s collection of Negatives & Contact sheets of his ‘Research & Documentation of Water Architecture of India’. This gift/donation was possible through celebrated Cinematographer & Photographer, Navroze Contractor, who happened to be a close friend of John.

An Architect & Architectural Photographer from California, John Dorio Nicolais was born on January 25, 1940 in California and died on October 28, 1979 at the age of 39. His parents received a word from him when he was a 2nd Lt. with the army stationed at Worms, saying he had won first place in the drawing class of a contest conducted by USAREUR. The name of the work was ‘Composite Landscape No. 1’, and in a letter, John said that he did the drawing last March after a drive down to Stuttgart, and that it was a synthesis of visual impressions gathered on the trip. It was done in India ink.

CEPT Archives: New Acquisition | John D. Nicolais

After receiving his Master’s degree in Architecture in 1967 from Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, John worked as an Architect with Private Architectural firms until 1976, when he started his own practice, and continued Architectural Photography. In a short span of 1968 to ‘78, John conducted an impressive number of public lectures and many were on Architecture in India and were published many times. Around 137 of his color photographs were published in the book “Louis Kahn”, article on published on “Doshi, Architect of India” in the Architectural Forum, New York, May 1973, which included text and photos, article “Ahmedabad Impressions” in the Journal of the Indian Institute of Students of Architecture, Dec 1968, to name a few. Some of his important photographic works include Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, 1959-65, which are in The Architectural Archives of University of Pennsylvania.

The Collection that CEPT Archives has received had won him an Award of Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969 to work on the “Research and Documentation in the subject of Water Architecture of India.” The Collection, which is an extensive work in progress and of great value for further research, comprises 2815 Negatives & 83 Contact sheets (other than handwritten notes & scripts) that range from the late 60’s to 1977-‘78 and are currently classified into eight major categories, viz. (1) Bathing Ghats, (2) Dams, (3) Reservoirs, (4) Water Palaces, (5) Tanks, (6) Stepwells, (7) Resort Wells and (8) Bathing Fountains. John had traveled extensively all over India, as well as in Sri Lanka & Nepal, to an approximate 103 sites and locations to build his collection on Water Architecture.

CEPT Archives: New Acquisition | John D. Nicolais