Nancy Honey

Born in America in 1948, Nancy Honey moved to England where she became a mother and raised her children this is when she started her photography journey in a male dominated industry.  Honey focuses on 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. As such they create a consistent body of work that’s asked a single question from many different angles – what does it mean to be a woman, now, in this particular time and place?

The question that Nancy Honey asks and questions her work on has intrigued me as a female as I think it’s is a question that many females have questioned and thought upon.

Her work questions and challenges the exam boards topic of observe, seek, and challenge as in one of her projects she spend hears observing her own child crating a project on her growing up and how she changes and grows up, the project also challenges female stereotypes as her child had very short hair and some masculine features, in many of the photographs of when shew was younger she wore gender neutral colours which audiences don’t usually see as when children are young there parent’s tend to dress them in stereotypically gender rolled clothes like pink purple and dresses which isn’t shown in the project a lot when she was younger which emphasises that she hasn’t been conformed into gender stereotypes when she was younger even though she did feminine acts when she was little like applying lipstick.

Nancy Honeys project ‘Daisy’ took 40 years to make, it was shot on film and most of the photos are taken at life events like birthdays and ‘first bra’ the photos also symbolise big feminine moments which happens to all females the project also shows the bond a mother and daughter have and how close and comfortable they are with one and other.

Nancy Honey’s Biography On The Project ‘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.

It started when she was a year old and I was just beginning to then use my little black and white camera to document events, more or less as a diary. I was finally beginning to learn about the technical side of photography, which I’d always loved, but had been intimidated by the science. I had always been an artist, but mostly used painting and drawing, having initially studied Fine Art in the USA. After having children I was desperate to complete my education and finished with a degree in Visual Communication at Bath Academy of Art in Wiltshire. I learned about photography there as well as typography and printmaking. 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.