ARTIST: nancy hellebrand
Art Histories are highly curated presentations of an artists’ life’s work provided for appreciators today, scholars of tomorrow, and generations to come.
Nancy Hellebrand is a trailblazing figure in photography, celebrated for her exhibitions in prestigious institutions like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tate Liverpool, and MoMA in New York. Notably, her solo showcase at the National Portrait Gallery in London marked a historic first for an American artist and a living woman.
Her works grace collections at MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Influenced by luminaries such as Alexey Brodovitch and Bill Brandt, Hellebrand's artistry is characterized by a profound commitment to empathy and understanding.
As an educator at Yale University and Parsons The New School for Design, Hellebrand's impact extends beyond her art. She's been honored with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, further solidifying her legacy.
In her ongoing series, Naked, Hellebrand challenges norms and celebrates the beauty of aging through striking portraits of nude older women, inviting viewers to reconsider conventional ideals.
Nancy Hellebrand's visionary approach continues to redefine the boundaries of contemporary photography, inviting viewers on a journey of introspection and empathy.
“My photography is my cry for peace and derives from my need to act from the respect we owe all beings and the planet we inhabit. We must honor each other in our Diversity and our Oneness. That is why I do this work.”
COLLECTION: NAKED
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Artist Statement
Older women’s well worn bodies are incredibly beautiful. When there’s no agenda, and one just looks, seeing a nude body is profound. Our shared humanity and our individuality are simultaneously visible. When printed very large, aging flesh reveals loss and death. When printed very small, the photographs recall 19th century hand-held “likenesses” of soldiers and slaves. We see the reality of unequal suffering in the body and posture of each sitter.
In today’s cosmetic, consumer and over-sexualized culture, older women’s bodies are invisible solely because they are not youthful. My experience illustrates this. Around the time I turned 70 I was no longer perceived as interesting or particularly astute. At openings and other gatherings I felt I was ignored and isolated, I’m sure because my posture and my body looked old. Being old is not easy and the annoying and embarrassing things one puts up with every day are obnoxious and disheartening at best. For example, now I’m more easily distracted; I have memory failures; and I respond more slowly, physically and mentally. But something huge is missing when that’s all we talk about. The old me has some profoundly good things not recognized by our youth-crazed culture. Though not immediately visible, these changes are very significant - most notably, I care more deeply about other people.
Noticing this old lady dichotomy of indifference from the world around me vs my internal growth and resilience, I started to photograph my contemporaries. I photographed their eyes and mouths, fascinated with their relationship to aging. I made highly magnified and three dimensional prints, but after a while I felt I was missing something, and that whatever I was looking for would be more apparent in photographs of the women nude - they would be Naked.
About the lack of faces. Faces divert our attention because we’re genetically programmed to look at them. When I’m photographing, I want to see what the body reveals, and faces distract us from the subject we’re here to see.
I’ve found there’s so much to learn in seeing a woman NAKED. Each older woman's body reveals the life she lived and who she is at this time. Her flesh may be saggy, scarred and wrinkled, but that’s who she is now!! We need a different way of seeing that person, one that includes her true beauty, who she is.
There’s magic in acknowledging old women and giving them the interest and appreciation our culture reserves for the young. If this isn’t beautiful, important and poignant, I don’t know what is.
Photographs in this series can be shown large and/or small. Sizes range from approximately 2.5 x 2” to 5 x 8’. The smaller images are intimate and the larger are more confrontational. Large images are printed as archival inkjet or vinyl prints; small prints are photogravures and/or on plaster.
COLLECTION: HOW SHE WAS
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Artist Statement
The photographs in How She Was show words and images from a journal “written” by my mother as she was losing her bearings to Alzheimer’s. Although her awareness was fleeting, somehow there was still a definite glimmer of who/how she was, which inspired me to make straight forward prints of her journal as an homage to her struggle. Several years later, in 2019, I started to see fragments in the full page images that I realized were complete in themselves - beautiful, alive and haunting.
The pages of the journal were scanned so the Archival Inkjet Prints can be large and painterly, or small and intimate. I like when they’re close to the size of a postage stamp.
COLLECTION: Torn. Crushed. Ripped. Beautiful.
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Artist Statement
Torn. Crushed. Ripped. Beautiful. is a series of three-dimensional photographs of older women’s eyes and mouths which have been torn, crushed, ripped and shaped. These images vary in size from a few inches to several feet. Some are hung on the wall, others placed on a table or the floor.
We live in a society that does not value old women. The women who posed for these photographs experienced being appreciated just for who they were, which is still a radical act.
Each image is an Archival Inkjet Print uniquely crushed to mirror our cultural antipathy for anything that’s not new, young and obviously daring and sexy.
PUBLICATION
Light & Matter: The Photographic Object
Featuring artwork by Nancy Hellebrand
Curated by Kelsey Halliday Johnson
James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA
COLLECTION: kensington, pa
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Artist Statement
This series is similar in content to Londoners, the series that preceded it, but these photographs are mostly taken outdoors and the scale of the prints is significantly smaller. At the time, these changes felt like a huge transition, both aesthetically and technically. I was no longer asking someone if I could take their picture, which is a very different experience from having a person’s consent. I started to see street life as dance and my familiar view of what was background became my new subject.
I used Graflex cameras which have waist level viewfinders. I chose them because people were less aware I was photographing than if I had a small camera held up to my face. This was before cell phones existed. Graflex negatives were large enough to contact print which allowed me to make 4 x 5” and 3 ¼ x 4 1/4” platinum and palladium prints. There was a delicacy in the prints that contrasted with the grittiness of the streets.
PUBLICATION
Voices of Kensington: Vanishing Mills Vanishing Neighborhoods
Photographs by Nancy Hellebrand
Written by Jean Seder
Published by EPM Publications, Inc.; 2nd edition, 1990
ISBN-10: 0939009374
PUBLICATION
Women Photographers
by Constance Sullivan
Published by Harry N. Abrams
ISBN: 0810939509
COLLECTION: LONDONERS at home
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Artist Statement
Londoners at Home was photographed from 1971-74 when I lived in London. I was (and continue to be), driven by my desire to photograph the poignancy of ordinary people in their daily lives, not posing for the camera. The closer we look, the more important each individual becomes.
Londoners was photographed with a Hasselblad Superwide on a tripod. Because of the extreme wide angle of the Superwide, the camera was very close to the subject and could still include much of the space around them. The prints are selenium toned silver prints, approximately 15” square.
PUBLICATION
Londoners, Photographs by Nancy Hellebrand
Published in 1974 in conjunction with a solo exhibition,
Londoners At Home, at the
National Portrait Gallery London, UK
Published by Lund Humphries; First Edition, 1974
ISBN-10: 0853313423
PUBLICATION
How We Are: Photographing Britain Paperback
by Val Williams, Susan Bright, Martin Parr
Published by Tate Publishing, 2017
ISBN-10: 1854377140
PRESS
Nancy Hellebrand © Image courtesy of Amie Potsic
Amie Potsic interviews photographer Nancy Hellebrand about her solo exhibition EVERYBODYBEAUTIFUL at The Print Center in Philadelphia. Hellebrand's work investigates the evolving beauty of the aging female body in intimate and exquisite prints on unconventional materials.
Highlights Include:
Photographer takes pictures of naked - and beautiful - older women
Written by Lini S. Kadaba
Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2017 Photographer Nancy Hellebrand works with a subject in her apartment in Cherry Hill, N.J For her recent project, Hellebrand is creating nude photos of women's bodies, often focusing just on parts and smaller details.
Large Bodies
Written by Charles Hagen
© Nancy Hellebrand, 2024
Natural wonders
Written by a Staff Writer of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
© Nancy Hellebrand, Trees, 2010. Image Courtesy of Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Nancy Hellebrand, Studio view © Nancy Hellebrand, 2024
To acquire artwork from Nancy Hellebrand’s collection, email info@amiepotsicartadvisory.com.
Click here to download Nancy Hellebrand’s CV.
To learn more about the artist: www.nancyhellebrand.com
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