{"id":656055,"date":"2026-05-21T07:59:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T07:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/656055\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T07:59:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T07:59:18","slug":"nancy-honeys-photographs-document-the-journey-to-womanhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/656055\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Honey\u2019s Photographs Document the Journey to Womanhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

The beloved photographer\u2019s recent exhibition in Claire de Rouen brought together tender pictures of girlhood and womanhood from her vast archiveMay 20, 2026<\/p>\n

For over four decades, American-born photographer Nancy Honey has been making pictures exploring the experience of womanhood. Inspired by image-makers such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Nan Goldin<\/a>, who have used their immediate environments and what they had at hand to create work of extraordinary imagination and empathy, Honey\u2019s heartfelt portraits honour her chosen theme with tenderness, humour, beauty and dignity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always wanted to be an artist all my life, I can\u2019t remember anything else,\u201d she says. Now 78, her route to photography was indirect \u2013 she trained in fine art as a painter during the height of flower power on the West Coast before tentatively experimenting with photography. \u201cMy ex-husband and I had lived together in San Francisco and made a little dark room in the cupboard under the stairs. I was working in black and white, just self-taught,\u201d she recalls. After moving to the UK and settling in Bath with her young family, she enrolled in a visual communication course \u2013 the closest thing she could find to a photography class. \u201cI had a one-year-old and a three-year-old, but I just thought, \u2018Wow, I have to get my degree,\u2019 because I knew by then I wanted to be a photographer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Honey was drawn to photography for its immediacy, as well as its ability to distil a passing moment. \u201cOver the years, you learn all the things that you love about photography,\u201d she explains. \u201cI love the relationship it has with time. Almost every photographer I\u2019ve ever met, when we look at our pictures, we can remember the exact time we took each one.\u201d Over the ensuing decades she shot prolifically, creating numerous bodies of work and amassing a vast archive of pictures (and memories).<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"NancyPhotography by Nancy Honey<\/p>\n

Her recent exhibition, which was on display at the newly opened Shoreditch site of legendary fashion and photography bookshop Claire de Rouen, pulled together images from across multiple bodies of work. Curated by the store\u2019s new co-director Dominic Bell, it created a previously unseen configuration of her work and featured images from projects including Entering the Masquerade, a series of portraits of girls aged 11 to 14, and Woman to Woman, a project originally comprised of 22 triptychs about womanhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work is just so original, it\u2019s photography at its best \u2013 it captures something we all know and can relate to,\u201d says Bell. \u201cPhotography can be quite ageist, always on the lookout for the new and emerging. It\u2019s important to highlight work that stands the test of time and resonates from the past. We all fell in love with photography through looking at photo albums of family and loved ones. Nancy\u2019s archive is one of the most special things we\u2019ve come across, endless beautiful hand-printed c-types and projects that haven\u2019t yet seen the light of day. There aren\u2019t many archives in the UK like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"NancyPhotography by Nancy Honey<\/p>\n

Woman to Woman, perhaps one of her most defining and epic projects, was made from 1987 to 1990 and took Honey into a range of sites she associated with women\u2019s lives. She says, \u201cI knew at the beginning that I wanted to make a project explaining how it felt like to me to be a woman. I really didn\u2019t know how to express that, but I knew that if I placed myself in places that had to do with being a woman, I would eventually find things, and that\u2019s exactly what I did.\u201d She travelled everywhere she could think that contributed to the matrix of female experience, from mother and toddler groups to the factory that made Marks & Spencer\u2019s underwear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 66 pictures arranged as 22 triptychs, in many ways, it epitomises the sentiment of her approach to image-making and curation. Placing the images side-by-side assembles new meanings while also creating ambiguity. \u201cFor me, it was very personal. I wanted to make work always about being a woman \u2013 things that I\u2019ve done, or even that I fear \u2013 but I didn\u2019t want it to be didactic and hit people over the head, right? I just wanted to play with what happens when you put pictures next to each other, and then it really resonates with, say, some of your experience. If the three-in-a-row were ever a distinct narrative, I would always change it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she no longer shoots, Honey is immersed in working on the \u201cgigantic burden\u201d of her archive, organising her work and forging new meanings in the abundance of photographs and memories \u2013 a kind of vast autobiography composed of images. \u201cLike so many artists, we\u2019re looking at things from an autobiographical point of view, whether we like it or not,\u201d she says. \u201cMy aim has always been to have my work be deeply personal and, at the same time, universal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claire de Rouen<\/a>\u2019s new shop is now open at 11A Kingsland Road, London. Their outstanding cultural programming continues with more exhibitions planned to celebrate their 20th anniversary year, and their collaboration and partnership with Ala\u00efa has continued since 2024, when Pieter Mulier and Ala\u00efa invited the Claire de Rouen team to open a second book shop at their New Bond Street store.<\/p>\n