Lora Webb Nichols

Lora Webb Nichols (1883–1962) was an American photographer and diarist.

Early life and education Nichols was born in Boulder, Colorado. Her grandfather was Colorado Lieutenant Governor David H. Nichols. She moved with her family to Encampment, Wyoming.

Life and work Nichols began photographing in 1899 at age 16. Lucy Davies, writing in The Daily Telegraph, described her work as recording Wyoming's "inconsequential chores and rituals (washing, shovelling snow, braiding hair) rather than grand events. Even so, her frank, bold pictures capture the clean-cut thrill of pioneer life, of America's hugeness and scope." Around 1905, Nichols built a darkroom and worked as a photographer and a photo finisher. In 1925, she founded three businesses in Encampment: the Rocky Mountain Studio which developed film and loaned cameras; The Encampment Echo newspaper; and The Sugar Bowl, selling soda and ice cream. When cowboys and young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps passed through town, Nichols would loan them a camera and ask them to return with photographs. These images represent about a third of her archive.

Personal life She had six children. Her diaries and other photographs are held at Grand Encampment Museum in Encampment.

Publications Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899–1948. Amsterdam: Fw, 2020. Edited by Nicole Jean Hill. . With essays by Nancy F. Anderson and Hill. Amsterdam: Fw, 2021.