Bea Nettles
Traces, 2000

Archival Epson print, 18.5 x 14.5 inches
Edition 1/2, signed, verso
Unframed
Courtesy of the artist
Estimated value: $1,000

Throughout my career, I have explored various approaches to photography, including mixed media, alternative processes, black-and-white, and color, as well as artist's books. During this time, the themes in my work have been consistently autobiographical and narrative.

For nearly ten years I developed a body of work called "Return Trips." My travels to Italy, Spain, Morocco, Nova Scotia, and several states in the USA, including North Carolina, Maine, New Mexico, Illinois, and Florida, were reflected in this landscape work. To create it, it was necessary for me to travel. First impressions, and sometimes when I was fortunate, repeated visits, are recorded in this imagery. The work incorporates complex relationships between the photographs, both formal and narrative. The idea first occurred to me after viewing predellas in Italy, where a main image was supplemented by smaller related ones in adjoining frames.

Traces includes images of my father's hand, my childhood backyard, and the coastal landscapes of Florida where I grew up. I have been combining these images with portraits and glimpses of my daily routine in ways that deal with the layered and cyclical nature of time and the sense of place and memory that I experience strongly, perhaps more strongly as the years go by.

About the Artist:
Bea Nettles

The exhibition career of Bea Nettles began in 1970, when her work was shown in “Photography Into Sculpture,” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It has recently been featured in a two-year traveling retrospective exhibition and monograph, "Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory." Her work has been featured in exhibitions throughout the world and is found in history texts including Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being (Abrams), History of Women in Photography (Abbeville Press), World History of Photography (Abbeville Press), and Photographers Encyclopeaedia International (M Auer, Switzerland).

Her images are in numerous collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON; the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; and Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. Her artist's books can be found in special collections libraries at museums and universities. Nettles has received two National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowships and grants from the New York and Illinois State Arts Councils.

She has taught photography and visual books since 1970. Her classic alternative processes textbook Breaking the Rules: A Photo Media Cookbook influenced two generations of readers. She has delivered lectures and workshops internationally and is recognized for her innovations in mixed-media photography.

Website: beanettles.com
Instagram: @beanettles