Collecting Conversations: Bea Nettles

Online conversation with artist Bea Nettles in a new Ransom Center series "Collecting Conversations: Five Women in American Photography."
Program description
In this conversation with Dr. Jessica S. McDonald, the Ransom Center’s curator of photography, artist Bea Nettles reflects on her first courses in photography and the anti-establishment professors who encouraged her to experiment with materials and techniques. Nettles tells stories of resourcefulness, describing her initial attempt at stitching into a photograph as the practical solution to a logistical problem. She explores the deeply autobiographical nature of her work, detailing the recurrence of feminine mythological symbols and their association with menstruation, pregnancy, and other aspects of women’s lives long considered taboo subjects for art. She muses about moments in her life when her subconscious fears and desires have emerged in her work, seeming to foretell significant life events.
Artist bio
Bea Nettles is an artist and educator who has been exhibiting and publishing her autobiographical works since 1970. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she established the undergraduate program in photography in 1984 and was chair until 1999 before retiring in 2008. The major retrospective exhibition Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory was presented at the Sheldon Art Gallery in St. Louis, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, and the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois from 2019 to 2021, with a catalogue of the same name co-published by the George Eastman Museum and the University of Texas Press. More information: beanettles.com/
Watch: Bea Nettles & Flamingo in the Dark: • Bea Nettles & Flamingo...
Series description
Collecting Conversations: Five Women in American Photography is a series of timely interviews with five artists whose work has recently entered the Ransom Center’s photography collection: Betty Hahn, Joanne Leonard, Joan Lyons, Bea Nettles, and Susan Ressler. Conducted by Dr. Jessica S. McDonald, the Ransom Center’s curator of photography, these expansive conversations introduce newly acquired works and situate them within each artist’s creative practice and personal life. The series culminates in a lively panel discussion aimed at exploring the cultural and institutional conditions that affected these artists’ careers and have shaped our collections over the last half century. The group talks candidly about successes and failures, and about what it means for an artist, or her work, to be “rediscovered” now.
[Featured image: Bea Nettles (American, b. 1946), Moon Portrait, 1976. Gum bichromate print with applied color, 17 7/8 x 15 in. Photography collection, purchased with funds provided by the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Endowment in Photography, and by the David Douglas Duncan Endowment for Photojournalism, 2021:0005:0006. © Bea Nettles]
Artist Bea Nettles with Dr. Jessica S. McDonald, curator of photography
Recorded May 28, 2021
Released March 3, 2022
Part of the series Collecting Conversations: Five Women in American Photography
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