Nancy Honey
Bio
Nancy Honey (born 1948) is a UK-based American documentary and portrait photographer. Her work focuses on the lives of women, autobiographical, collaborative and documentary. She has been photographing for more than 40 years and has studied fine art, graphic design and photography in the United States and the United Kingdom. She has received many awards and commissions for her widely publicised work.
Nancy Honey’s personal work is just that – personal. Made over nearly 40 years, her images draw on her own experiences to consider topics such as motherhood, sexuality, power, and ageing. But though they’re framed by her biography, her projects look outwards, depicting and recording everyone from schoolgirls to businesswomen, infants to the elderly, models and bus passengers.
Her works
Woman to Woman
“In this body of work I set out to define and separate the various strands that make up my sense of my own femininity. How does sexuality manifest itself in me and what is the difference between what I feel and the ubiquitous stereotypical mass cultural images that surround me? How conditioned are my responses?” – Honey on the project
It consists of 22 colour triptychs.
Honey uses this quote from John Berger’s academic work to describe the project:
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself, whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.”— Ways of Seeing, John Berger, 1972
Daisy
“This is a large collection of pictures I made with my daughter, Daisy over many years. I became fascinated with photographing her as I emerged as a photographic artist. She and I did it together and it was something I greatly enjoyed.” -Honey on this project
“I continued to make pictures of Daisy over many years and included her in every project I could. My son, Jesse, declared that making pictures together was boring early on and therefore I made far less which included him.
The project, which was never a formal one, just kept evolving. She was very good natured and patient and rarely refused.”
100 Leading Ladies
“During 2012-2014, I endeavoured to photograph 100 of Britain’s most respected women over the age of 55; from academics to entrepreneurs, fashion designers to composers. The Leading Ladies all share one thing in common; they are leading figures in their fields and have defied gender stereotypes.”
“I invited each woman to select a place of inspiration for their portrait setting, affording the viewer further insight into the lives, personalities and character of these admirable women.”
The photos were first exhibited at Somerset House, London in 2014. The exhibition toured the UK for 2 years afterwards.
Some more of her major/most well known works
I think this image represents the female gaze very well, even if the image is of a nude woman, it is taken in a way to show the natural beauty of the woman, not the idealistic view that can be seen in the male gaze. The natural light coming into the room really enforces the natural view of the female gaze