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From the Archive: Bea Nettles

From the Collection Wall

Artist and educator Bea Nettles is best known for her innovations in alternative photographic processes and artist’s book works during the experimental ferment of the 1970s and 1980s, which place her among the medium’s most influential figures. Incorporating domestic craft and layered elements with her images, she has used a range of techniques and materials including handwriting, re-photographed snapshots, toy camera images, painting, and bricolaged fabric, thread and plastic. Nettles is also a pioneer of DIY self-publishing and distribution, tenaciously seeking an audience outside the mainstream art world.

Much of Nettles’ photography chronicles key stages in the lives of women, often through self-portraiture and the universalization of her own identity. Addressing family relationships and bodily experience, together with elements of mythology and natural science, Nettles’ work has become a touchstone in the history of feminist art. The selection here features early works and publications, each exemplifying the synthesis of experimentation and personal insight that has made her contribution to the medium so critical.

Paul Roth, IMC Director
Natalie Spagnol, Assistant Curator 

From the Collection is a rotating display highlighting works from the Ryerson Image Centre’s permanent collection.

Fig. 1
Bea Nettles St. Croix photo
Fig. 2

Bea Nettles, St. Croix, 1976, photo-sensitized linen (Luminos). The Image Centre, purchase, 2014

Bea Nettles Yin Yang Series photo
Fig. 3

Bea Nettles, Yin Yang Series, 1968, gelatin silver prints. The Image Centre, gift of the artist, 2014

Bea Nettles Island Sunset photo
Fig. 4

Bea Nettles, Island Sunset, 1976, Kwik print on vinyl. The Image Centre, purchase, 2014

Artist Bio

Bea Nettles
Artist

Bea Nettles studied art and photography with Robert Fichter and Jerry Uelsmann at the University of Florida, Gainesville, graduating in 1968. She has had over fifty solo exhibitions at such institutions as George Eastman House in Rochester and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Her works have also been shown internationally in major group exhibitions, including the seminal Museum of Modern Art show Photography Into Sculpture in 1970. Her photographs and books are included in numerous important collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in New Haven, and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. An influential educator, Nettles taught photography and artists’ bookmaking from 1970 to 2007 at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, and the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, where she is Professor Emerita.

Installation Shots

Bea Nettles collection from the IMC archive
Fig. 1

From the Archive: Bea Nettles (installation view), 2016 © Larissa Issler, The Image Centre

Bea Nettles collection from the IMC archive
Fig. 2

From the Archive: Bea Nettles (installation view), 2016 © Larissa Issler, The Image Centre

Bea Nettles collection from the IMC archive
Fig. 3

From the Archive: Bea Nettles (installation view), 2016 © Larissa Issler, The Image Centre