Suzanna...Surprised

Out of nostalgia for her home as a graduate school student in 1968, Bea Nettles started sewing a quilt. This activity led her paint on a quilted canvas. By the summer of 1970, already established as a photographer, she began experimenting with sewing paper photographs and painting photo emulsion on fabrics which she stitched into reliefs. Suzanna …Surprised, 1970, is a work which challenges the traditional notions of photography in process, color, and subject matter. Nettles created this work at the height of protests against America’s involvement in Vietnam. The nude figure, which is stuffed and sewed around the edges, is a self-portrait adhered to a faint image of a formal garden. Nettles has created a contemporary version on the theme of Susanna and the Elders, which shows only the bather in her garden. She forces the viewer into the role of the elders who have been caught peering from the bushes. Nettles looks the viewer in the eye and overpowers the spectator.

Bea Nettles has been exhibiting and publishing her autobiographical works since 1970, the year this work was completed. Since then, she has had over fifty one-person exhibitions at prestigious venues including the International Museum of Photography at the Eastman House, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and Light Gallery and Witkin Gallery in New York City. Her works have also been shown internationally in major group exhibitions. Her images are in numerous collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Polaroid International Collection, the International Museum of Photography at the Eastman House, and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. She has taught photography and artists’ books since 1970 at Rochester Institute of Technology, Tyler School of Art, and the University of Illinois where she is currently a Professor. Suzanna …Surprised, 1970, is the first work by Bea Nettles to enter The Phillips Collection.