An exhibition opens up next week at the Weyburn Art Gallery featuring photos taken by the late Greg Nikkel, spanning the better part of his more than 30-year career with the Weyburn Review.
City Curator Regan Lanning said the timing couldn't be better to make an exception to her rule of hosting just one exhibition at a time in the gallery.
"Tracy Nikkel came to me a couple of weeks ago wanting help with figuring out how to display some of Greg's photos, and I was able to look at the times and move some stuff around and create Gallery space so that we could host a tribute to Greg," she explained.
The exhibition opens on Tuesday, April 29th, with a reception being held at 7 p.m.
"His funeral is on the 30th, so I love that we were able to hold the reception at a time when his friends and family would be in Weyburn because they're not from Weyburn, so I like that will maybe be able to show his family how much he meant to our community."
Lanning said the exhibition features 19 photos in all, ranging from 2001 to 2024. While some are his award-winning photos, she noted some reveal how Greg saw his community over the years.
"There are a lot of photos of just people doing everyday Weyburn things. There are pictures of the crowds at events. There are pictures of instantly recognizable events that happened in Weyburn that he covered."
"His job was looking at us and he was easy to overlook. He was just the quiet guy with the camera. But he was everywhere. So this exhibition is a loving tribute to his work over the past generation. He won a lot of awards for his work, so I took Tracy's idea and kind of ran with it and I talked to people at the Review. Sabrina and Leslie were very helpful and I was able to gain access to some photo archives and look at old photos that Greg had taken."
Lanning said she doesn't remember an event in Weyburn that Greg didn't cover.
"He covered my graduation. He was everywhere. He was one of my children's first safe strangers. They wanted to know the name of the guy with the camera," she shared. "He captured us. His job was capturing us. He had a unique viewpoint. He saw things that other people missed. I used to joke with him and I said, 'you know, if a tree fell in Weyburn and you weren't there to take photos of it, did it happen?' He was ubiquitous to Weyburn and his passing is a huge blow to our community, because you don't know what you've got until you lose it."
"He saw us all. He was in it and a part of it, but also not. It was fascinating. It was like Greg was the 'Fourth Wall'. You almost didn't notice him. He was so unassuming and quiet in his ways. But at the same time, he saw us in the good, he saw us in the bad, and he saw us in the ugly and he still loved us."
She noted, "Greg traveled a lot as a child and he didn't really have a hometown, and he considered Weyburn to be his hometown, and we were so gifted with his presence."
Lanning said she developed a friendship with Greg over the years, and she was always amazed at how he seemed to know everyone, and if he didn't, he would ensure he found out their name to add into the cut line of the photo being published.
"He was a unique feature of this community that I don't know we'll ever have again. And I've never lived in another community that had a Greg. His brain was beautiful. I don't know how he managed that information. But he never missed a beat. He never missed an event. He never missed a moment. Greg was everywhere."
She added that Greg Nikkel's presence in the community was so reliable and seemingly omnipresent that he could even be compared to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
Read more: "He loved this City": Weyburn pays tribute to journalist Greg Nikkel