As the glass negatives reveal, Nicolson was also a skilled
photographer. On the High Street premises he had a dark room and a
studio, where he took portraits of families, individuals, and even
dogs. The dark room and studio, situated in a building to the rear,
still stand today. However he was better known for publishing a
series of postcards of Wigtown and the surrounding area. While he
took and developed the photographs for the postcards himself, the
latter were actually printed in Germany. Most of the negatives
given to the Museum are of pictures for postcards but a few are
studio portraits. The Museum also has a number of the finished
postcards and a comparison of negative and postcard of the same
picture shows that the negative was cut down to produce a postcard
showing a smaller area. While, understandably, most of the
photographs are of Wigtown, the geographic range is from Creetown
in the east to Glenluce in the west. They all appear to have been
taken between 1905 and 1914.
The collection consists of 129 negatives, most in surprisingly
good condition. Taken together, the scenes, portraits, and group
photographs provide a vivid picture of life in this area in the
years immediately before the First World War.