Photographer and filmmaker Nic Nicosia makes pictures. Since the late 1970s, Nicosia has staged and constructed sets, objects, and situations to be photographed rather than to reproduce something that already exists. These conceptual fabrications have ranged from elaborate sets with live actors to dioramas and abstract constructions. Whether his pictures contain a disturbing suburban narrative, or are fabricated by the act of drawing, or are simply created by the use of common objects with dramatic lighting, the familiar thread of Nicosia’s unique vision and sensibility is always present.

Nic Nicosia is the first major publication of the artist’s work and covers his entire oeuvre through 2011. The catalog presents images from all of Nicosia’s major photographic series, including Domestic Dramas, Near (modern) Disasters, The Cast, Life as We Know It, Real Pictures, Love + Lust, Acts, Sex Acts, Untitled Landscapes, 365 SaFe Days, Untitled (drawing), Space Time Light, I See Light, and in the absence of others, as well as stills from the videos Middletown, Moving Picture, Middletown Morning, Cerchi E Quadratti, On Acting America, and 9 1/2 Hours to SaFe. Accompanying the catalog is an overview of Nicosia’s career by Michelle White, an interview with the artist by Sue Graze, and an original short story by Philipp Meyer that powerfully resonates with the sense of wonder and menace in Nicosia’s art.

Nic Nicosia’s work has been exhibited in several biennials, including the Whitney Biennials of 1983 and 2000 and Documenta IX in 1992, and collected by many major museums internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; the Dallas Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010.

Michelle White is Associate Curator at the Menil Collection. She is a frequent contributor to Art Papers and served for three years as the regional editor of the quarterly journal Art Lies.

Philipp Meyer is the acclaimed author of the novels American Rust and The Son.

Sue Graze is Director Emeritus of Arthouse at the Jones Center.

• Introduction: Making Pictures, by Michelle White
• A Conversation with Sue Graze: November, 2011
• The Plates
• "Road," by Philipp Meyer
• List of Plates
• Biography and Awards
• Exhibitions
• Selected Museum Collections
• Bibliography and Filmography
• Acknowledgments