Recently, Nyiri was commissioned by University of California President Richard C. Atkinson (1995-2003) to create a photographic survey of the ten-campus UC system. The Atkinson Photographic Archive, a personal gift from Rita and Richard Atkinson to the University of California, was created “in order to document the extraordinary architecture found on UC's campuses and to provide a source of campus images that will be available for all to use”. Over a six month period, Nyiri made several trips to each campus in order to photograph the architecture, details and the environment of each university. In all, 500 large-format images were made from the ground, and an additional 500 aerial images completed the study.

Click here to view Alan's work at the the Atkinson Archive website.

This work follows the photographic archive created in the 1960’s to document the rapidly expanding UC system. UC President Clarke Kerr commissioned Ansel Adams to create a much more comprehensive study of the university over a three-year period, which culminated in the book Fiat Lux – The University of California (McGraw Hill, 1967).  Click here to view Adam’s work at the Fiat Lux website.