Scott Nichols Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of historic photographs by the late photojournalist Horace Bristol. Bristol's photographs cover a broad sweep of 20th Century history and were published extensively by LIFE Magazine in the 1930's. His poignant portraits of migrant farm workers in California’s Central Valley, in collaboration with John Steinbeck, later inspired the novel The Grapes of Wrath gaining him recognition as a prolific photographer of his time.

In 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bristol joined an elite team of naval photographers under Edward Steichen documenting key naval battles, including the invasions of North Africa, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. When the war subsided he moved his family to Japan where he continued to photograph the devastation wrought by the war and set up his own Photo Agency, East-West, focusing on Pacific Rim countries in transition. He sold his photographs widely throughout South East Asia, Europe and the United States.

After a personal tragedy in 1956 Bristol abandoned photography and destroyed many of his negatives. Packing what remained of his photographic archive into lockers, he moved back to his native California to pursue a career in architecture. If it was not for his son, who thirty years later was assigned to read the Grapes of Wrath for high school, he may never have reopened the footlockers and reassessed his life's work.

This retrospective exhibition, celebrating the centennial of Bristol's birth, pays homage to a lifetime of incredible photographic achievement and marks his place amongst the finest documentary photographers of our time.