Escape #5: B in front of Birds

Item Details

1973

Silver gelatin fiber print on photo paper. SIGNED, titled and dated in pencil on the backside. Edition of 6 out of a series of 11 prints. 10 x 8 in (25.40 x 20.32 cm)

Bea Nettles' “Escape”series was published in Anne Tucker's seminal, The Woman's Eye (Knopf, NYC. 1973). Intended as an introduction to women photographers of the time, the book featured 10 female photographers. Besides Nettles, the photographers were Gertrude Kasebier, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Margaret Bourke, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, Barbar Morgan, Diane Arbus, Alisa Wells, and Judy Date. Taking a feminist approach, in the essay for the book, Tucker tries to pinpoint the female sensibility discussing the role and difficulties of women in art, photography history and the depiction of women by male photographers. 

In the book Nettles writes:

In my images I am attempting to make fantasies visible.
Through them I am investigating and sharing myself, my life, and the
landscape that is around and within me. Family ties, twenty years spent in 
the green growth of Florida, and dreams that I remember in the
morning are elements in my work. 

I feel that rather than “taking” photographs, I am making them. I freely
use any materials to make my images...thread, dust, cloth, plastic,
pencil, mirrors, as well as photographic paper and film. I'm trying to
stretch and share the limits of my imagination: that is why and how I
continue to work.