Nicholas Albrecht was born in Naples, Italy in 1982. His involvement with the arts began while studying fashion in Milan. Upon graduation he started working as an Art Director for three venues in Naples and Rome. During his years as an Art Director in Italy, Nicholas had the chance to work with students and professors from the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. His close relationship with Ludovica Rambelli and her continuous theatrical research inspired him to research more of his own interests. He started using photography as a research tool, which ultimately pushed him to continue his studies and relocated him to San Francisco. There he earned an MFA in Photography and developed a close relationship with the medium. In his work, Nicholas concentrates on the connection between individual and land and, in a greater context, how that influences social relations and notions of self. In 2014, One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, was published as an artist monograph by Schilt Publishing. Today we share Nicholas’ series One, No One and One Hundred Thousand.
One, No One and One Hundred Thousand
After living in a motorhome in the Salton Sea, Nicholas Albrecht questions the notion of being an insider through this intimate journey of discovery. Deserts are strange spaces in Western culture; we don’t really know how to be in them. There was the biblical version of the desert, the desert as a metaphor for isolation, asceticism, temptation, and death. In an attempt to document the experience of living in the Salton Sea, Albrecht breaks down these conventions to narrate his story. The photographs become symbolic representations of the people and the place. The truth is both vague and concrete as thoughts transform into reality. Similarly to how dreams are constructed, One, No One and One Hundred Thousand is a chaotic representation of life, identifying with one and its opposite.
To view more of Nicholas’ work, please visit his website.