L.A. Shoe Store, 1987

Archival pigment print, printed 2024

Image dimensions: 13" x 19"

Framed dimensions: 28" x 22"

Richard Nagler received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania with a major in political philosophy graduating Magna cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He fell in love with art serendipitously at the Philadelphia Museum of Art which is close to campus. While studying painting at the California College for the Arts, Richard began using photography as an aid to his oil paintings by projecting slides on canvas. Gradually the slides he was taking began to find a central place in Richard's attention. He began photographing exclusively almost 45 years ago with two primary areas of focus. He began photographing the streets of downtown Oakland, California, while simultaneously photographing the people and architecture of South Miami Beach, Florida.

The work in South Beach led to his first book of photography, My Love Affair with Miami Beach (Simon & Schuster, 1991) which was done in collaboration with the Nobel Prize winning Yiddish author, Isaac Bashevis Singer. His second book was published four years later, Oakland Rhapsody: The Secret Soul of an American Downtown (North Atlantic Books, 1995) with introduction and poetic contributions by MacArthur Award winning author, playwright, and poet, Ishmael Reed.

Both books received wide critical acclaim. Nagler continued broadening his photographic pursuit by looking for and recording accidental juxtapositions of people and their milieu around the world. This work led to his third book of photography Word on the Street (Heyday Books, 2010) which was introduced by Peter Selz, a renowned art historian and former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art.

His fourth book, Looking at Art/ The Art of Looking (Heyday Books, 2014) was introduced by celebrated author and publisher Malcolm Margolin and was the recipient of much recognition including the Non-Fiction Book Awards Gold Prize in Photography, National Independent Book Award for Excellence in Photography, The Indie-Fab Book Awards Gold Medal in Photography, and first prize in photography at the Beverly Hills Book Awards, along with other honors.

Nagler's work has been been featured in many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Artforum International and Color Magazine. His photographs are included in many private and public collections including the de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Magnes Museum, Berkeley, the Oakland Museum, the Jewish Museum, New York, and Beth Hatefutsoth, Tel Aviv, among others.

Nagler is also a reviewer of books on art and photography for The New York Journal of Books.

Courtesy of the Artist and George Krevsky Gallery