©Nick Meyer, Cover of Good Bones, Published by NOWHERE Books

Nick Meyer is releasing a new book through his new Imprint, Nowhere Books, titled Good Bones. This work inhabits the fragile space between the personal and the world view. As illness, anxiety, and questions about the future move through a family, the photographs become a meditation on what it means to live through an era defined by unease and uncertainty. Beneath these concerns runs a deeper current: a desire for stability and a recognition that every generation has faced its own version of change.

Moving between tenderness and apprehension, the series reflects on the ways show concern for one another while navigating forces beyond our control. It is a portrait of family life during unsettled times, but also a reminder that uncertainty is not unique to our moment. The world has always moved forward through periods of fear and change, buoyed by ordinary acts of resilience and hope. Good Bones emerged from Meyer’s experience of raising a young family amid overlapping crises.

Drawing a parallel to Gary Winogrand’s restless mid-career doubts, Meyer is looking out at the world both a self-portrait and a document of this time: an attempt to look clearly at the present while acknowledging the ways history repeats and persists. 

©Nick Meyer, Spread from Good Bones, Published by Nowhere Books

©Nick Meyer, Spread from Good Bones, Published by Nowhere Books

©Nick Meyer, Spread from Good Bones, Published by Nowhere Books

©Nick Meyer, Spread from Good Bones, Published by Nowhere Books

©Nick Meyer, Spread from Good Bones, Published by Nowhere Books

Artist Essay for Good Bones

One of my kids is barricaded in her room, sick with Covid for the first time. She made it through these first four years without seeing a double line, so her illness is mercifully mild, almost non-existent. The sound of whatever horrible Netflix show is blaring over the baby monitor I left in there so she can call me without spreading germs throughout the house.

My other daughter has developed acute anxiety; mostly a fear around being sick, but also about the world outside our house. She asks me to feel her forehead multiple times a day, and won’t let me listen to NPR in the car. She internalizes the news and it amplifies her anxiety. My wife continues to suggest that we move to another country. Sometimes she’s serious. I’m just not sure that would be any better, but I understand why she thinks so.

I find myself thinking about the past, even thinking I was born in the wrong generation. I know that I’m looking through a rose-colored lens, but it’s hard not to, given the relentless tumult of our present. It’s all anyone can think about. It’s the first thing we bring up when making small talk. But the world has always run into these difficulties and we’ve continued to slouch forward.

Gary Winogrand wrote in his 1964 Guggenheim application:

I look at the pictures I have done up to now, and they make
me feel that who we are and how we feel and what is to become
of us just doesn’t matter. Our aspirations and successes have
been cheap and petty. I read the newspapers, the columnists,
some books, I look at a lot of magazines (our press). They all
deal in illusions and fantasies. I can only conclude that we have
lost ourselves, and that the bomb just might finish the job
permanently, and it just doesn’t matter, we have not loved life
I cannot accept my conclusions so I must continue this
photographic investigation further and deeper. This is my project.

In 1964, Winogrand was only a few years younger than I am now (Although past what would be the middle of his too- short life). The world, and this country were in a similarly tentative place as they are now: Having adapted to a post-war abundance and preparing for the unrest of entering another era of upheaval. These parallels are not lost on me as I come into my own middle age, living in a world that refuses to be tethered to any rational or familiar way of understanding.

I suppose this is a self-portrait of sorts. Looking forward to the future that will be my legacy: how have I been able to navigate this confusing present? Clearly, I am not the first to look outside and feel this, and I am sure I won’t be the last. But even as this disquiet lingers, I do not believe we are all-together ineffective so I am working to gain an acceptance of things that may or may not be inevitable, to push back on our lost sense of self. Staring back, perhaps there can be a better awareness of our moments of joy, and with that insight, try to fix some of the rot that has invaded this house as we seek a way to regain control over a future that will remain undefined.

This is a thought in the abstract, a document of a time in history and a time in one’s life, seeking equivalents for the dizzying news cycles and this formless ennui. Thinking about how as history becomes the present and present becomes the past it often repeats itself. I am trying to make sense of the world that I will leave for my children…or at least appreciate that that may never become clear.

©Nick Meyer, Back Surgery, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Biology Lab, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Business Hours, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Corrugated Metal, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, With Light On, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Junk Shop, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Mirror, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Rainbow Sticker, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Rainbow, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Slide, from Good Bones

©Nick Meyer, Snow in Car, from Good Bones

Nick Meyer (B.1981) Is a photographer, artist, educator and publisher living and working in Western Massachusetts. His work often uses a documentary adjacent approach to explore themes of permanence and mutability. He uses the snippets of the real world to tell stories that delve a little deeper, seeking a common understanding.

He is the recipient of the Pace Gallery Award and the Barclay Simpson Prize. Past clients include Mass Appeal Magazine, Wired, Harpers, The New Yorker and The New York Times. His project “Either Limits or Contradictions”, (Published, Daylight 2017) appeared in TIME, Huck Magazine, Musee, L’oel De La Photographie and Ain’t-Bad. His third book of photographs, “The Local” was published by MACK in 2021 and was featured in publications such as Buzzfeed, The Guardian, Rolling Stone Italia, Creative Review, The Boston Globe and is in the permanent collection at MoMA. In 2025 he founded NOWHERE Books which released his book “Good Bones” in 2026.

His work has been shown both nationally and internationally and is included in numerous private collections.

Instagram: @nickmeyerstudio