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Nicholas DeVore III

Nicholas DeVore III

Nicholas DeVore III (April 24, 1949 – May 16, 2003) was a noted freelance photographer in the 70s, 80s and early 90s who spent 25 years traveling the world taking photos for publications such as National Geographic, Fortune, LIFE, and GEO.

Contents 1. Life 2. Photography Career 3. Photography Art 4. Death

Life

While DeVore was acknowledged as an excellent technical photographer of the outdoors, it was the way he embraced cultures and provoked people that made his work stand out. His focus on international destinations – landscapes, people and culture – continues to draw admirers and followers. A signature expression of his style, subject matter and viewpoint remains Village Japan: the Four Seasons of Shimukappu, a photographic album that spanned almost two years in the making. It lasts as the only existing published collection of DeVore’s photography to date.

In an Aspen Times article DeVore summed up what would be his guiding philosophy for life. "I feel like a humanitarian ... turning on all those people to how I feel about places and people. Introducing my friends to my other friends."

His work exploited vivid color and advanced in-camera techniques such as double and triple exposures. His style sometimes countered traditional travel and adventure photography standards as he promoted impressionistic images created by “huffing” or fogging the camera lens with his breath and using natural settings such as water, rain, condensation, glass, etc. to frame and artfully distort the picture.

DeVore was born in Paris, France, the son of U.S. Air Force Maj. Nicholas DeVore II and British-born Sheila Barry DeVore. He was brought up in Europe and Aspen, where he developed his love for the mountains. His grandfather was Nicholas DeVore I, author and professor who pioneered the academic study of astrology.

A charismatic student, Nicholas graduated as class president from Aspen High School, where he played hockey and ski jumped for the Aspen Ski Club. He graduated from Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School, and worked as a wilderness ranger, soloing for days in the backcountry.

DeVore didn't get his first camera until he was 19. An avid hunter and marksman, he had a natural eye that transitioned from gun sites to camera lens. After studying briefly at Colorado Mountain College and Aspen's renowned Center of the Eye, Nicholas practiced his outdoor photography while working for the Forest Service.

In 1972 DeVore caught the attention of Robert Gilka, the legendary photo director of National Geographic, with an amateur portfolio shot in the Galapagos Islands. Nicholas leapt from an Aspen chair lift to retrieve the editor’s dropped camera, and landed a career start as the Geographic’s youngest contributor. Physical and technical prowess proved him a go-to for arduous assignments: South Pacific canoeing with celestial navigators, Polynesian rafting from Hawaii to Tahiti, Artic dog sledding, trekking Mt. Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary.

Within months, Gilka commissioned Nicholas to the Wind River Range in Wyoming’s Bitterroot-Wind River National Wilderness to cover the National Outdoor Leadership School. The novice photographer had to accomplish technical climbs and frame shots high atop rock faces.

An inveterate traveler, DeVore crisscrossed the globe, and always sent birthday postcards to every individual he ever met from places such as Europe, India, Chile, Brazil, Iceland, Africa, Japan, South Pacific, and the Canadian Arctic. A thirst for adventure, even while working, led to exploits such as entering the private world of Geisha training in Kyoto, Japan, wind surfing in the Sahara, being shipwrecked in the Sea of Cortez, flying in illegal airspace in the Himalayas, scaling New York landmarks such as the Brooklyn Bridge and Chrysler Building, and perilously descending a Colorado Fourteener during a surprise blizzard.

Sam Abell, a staff photographer at National Geographic for 33 years, said DeVore was the most charismatic and flamboyant character he ever came across. "Even though the name ‘adventure travel’ didn't exist then, he would have been its primary photographer."

Photography Career

Early freelance assignments outside National Geographic included: • World Figure Skating Championships for ABC Television in January, 1975. • Photo essay on Idaho for the United States Department of Agriculture Bicentennial Book Project, March to April, 1975. • The United States Information Agency Border Project, which included a gallery of scenes from the Canadian and Mexican borders, December 1975.

His National Geographic resume includes:

Wind, Wave, Star, and Bird NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine 1974 Dec. Trek Across Arctic America NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine 1974 Mar. [Hokule'a] Follows the Stars to Tahiti NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine 1976 Oct. Should They Build a Fence Around Montana? NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine 1976 May Brazil's Golden Beachhead NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine 1978 Feb. Along the Great Divide NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine 1979 Oct. Park at the Top of the World NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine 1982 June Blue Horizons: Paradise Isles of the Pacific NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Book 1985 Wild and Windswept: Channel Islands National Park TRAVELER magazine 1985 Spring Majestic Island Worlds NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Book 1987 Tahiti's Soft Caress TRAVELER magazine 1987/88 Winter Excursion to Enchantment: A Journey to the World's Most Beautiful Places NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Book 1988

New England: Land of Scenic Splendor NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Book 1989

Time Out in Telluride TRAVELER magazine 1990 Sept./Oct.

Bali: Island of Deities and Dance TRAVELER magazine 1990 Mar./Apr.

In 1975, DeVore opened his first professional business, Sunshine Photography, with his long time friend and photographic colleague, Jonathan Wright. A few years later noted photographers David Hiser and Paul Chesley, also freelancers for National Geographic, merged with Nicholas and Jonathan to launch Photographers Aspen in 1984.

One of DeVore’s passionate personal projects spanned a decade. He created an ongoing series about well-known Colorado cowboy, Pat Mantle. Annually, DeVore would travel to shoot Mantle driving his herd of hundreds of horses across northern Colorado. In the early 1980s, he shot the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, which is world’s largest agricultural show. Another noteworthy independent project documented the first organized mountain bike tour through Southern India. Taken during January 1990, the tour was sponsored by India’s tourism industry and Aspen’s InnerAsia Expeditions International.

Nicholas primarily photographed with Nikon cameras, starting with an Olympus (OM-1 and OM-2). Introduced in 1972, the mechanical Olympus OM-1 was a new breed of small, lightweight single lens reflex cameras that validated Olympus as the most innovative 35mm SLR camera manufacturers of the seventies. For panoramic shots, DeVore employed a Hologon Camera, a fixed focus and viewfinder camera with no diaphragm. The fixed 15mm lens covered 110 degrees, considered extremely wide and sensational in its day, took crisp, cool colors. A graduated density filter compensated for light fall off toward the edges of the frame. The camera was introduced in 1969; making it the last of the Contarex line, and it was popular in the early to mid 1970s.

DeVore was a frequent lecturer and fellow of the Explorers Club, a member of the Society for Photographic Education, the International Advisory Board of Friends of Africa, the board of trustees for the Aspen Art Museum, and the director of Galerie Foto Arte. He also taught at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, Maine Photographic and Telluride's Autumn Eye workshops.

Photography Art

In addition to increasing his catalogue with personal and work photography, Nicholas branched into the esoteric field of photography art. The first photographic art exhibit of his personal pictures took place at Aspen’s Patricia Moore Gallery in February 1980.

Along with Michael A. Smith and Dr. David Heiden, DeVore contributed photos to an exhibition promoting international social awareness in 1983 at the Joanne Lyon Gallery. Included on the opening reception invitation was his Women on the Beach, an impressionistic photo of women in colorful, local dress, standing on a white sandy beach at the water’s edge. Completely created in-camera, the print is awash in pastels and muted blues and yellows and reddish oranges.

In 1985, Nicholas opened [name] Photo Art Gallery next door to Photographers Aspen and showcased fine art from other Geographic photographers and his own growing artistic and abstract body of work. He acquired portfolios from other well-known artists such Ernst Haas, a friend and strong influence.

In the late 80s the David Floria Gallery also hosted an exhibition of 16 of Nicholas’s most memorable images from National Geographic, LIFE, Time, Paris Match, Stern, Fortune, and American Photographer. His work also displayed in New York, Los Angeles, London, Milan, and Tokyo, and today is found in numerous private collections and public places. Trade journals ran features on DeVore and his work, including his artistic diversions, such as Darkroom Photography’s lengthy interview in the February 1990 issue.

One of his most provocative exhibitions quickly began as a private showing. DeVore premiered “Manoportraits after Marriage” at an invitation only show on July 26, 1991. The – at the time – titillating gallery of photos included intimate nude self portraits and either real or staged sexual acts with women of many nationalities from around the world, and a set of intimate physical contacts with a transvestite, including the exchange of wedding bands, which Nicholas now wore upon his right hand as a complement to his original wedding ring. His hand and wedding ring was double exposed over many of the pictures as a commentary on social mores, taboos and sexual identity and liberty.

In 1994, DeVore moved to Bisbee, where he pursued his art and founded the gallery ArtAttack. He gained particular notoriety in Bisbee, known for its artistic and counter culture free spirits, as a provocative performance artist. His winning entry in the local Dog Art contest, entitled Sushi Puppy, created national outrage that culminated with commentary by radio talk show host Paul Harvey. Sushi Puppy featured an actual puppy’s corpse encased in resin and presented as a sushi offering in a formal Japanese meal setting.

Death

Nicholas DeVore III was 54 when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday, May 16, having battled depression, alcoholism and the authority and conformity of an establishment he believed suffocated free art. He left an indelible mark on Bisbee, and at his death locals conducted a street parade in his memory, erected a shrine alongside his Bisbee gallery, ArtAttack, and commenced shouting tributes to him throughout the evening in the nearby canyons and hillsides.

DeVore is survived by his mother Sheila, wife Karinjo, son Nicholas IV, daughter Katrina, and his extensive body of professional and artistic work.