Nancy Rexroth

The first major study of Nancy Rexroth (b. 1946), Secrets of My Power furnishes a missing account of her life, work and career as she established her artistic voice in the experimental 1970s and challenged prevailing approaches to photographic image-making. This book locates Rexroth’s practice in a period often associated with those of Diane Arbus, Francesca Woodman and the early work of Sally Mann. Tracing Rexroth’s career from her first photographs to her discovery of the Diana camera and through her exploration of digital tools in the early 2000s, Secrets of My Power presents numerous works which have never previously been made public. These include experimental stills on film, a 53-image carousel slide show and a corpus of self-portraiture. Together with rigorous analysis of her previously known work, these new discoveries help to distinguish and connect Rexroth to key artistic formations of the American photography world in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, including contested social and creative terrain around feminism and gender, technical experimentation, engagement with language, artistic networks and photography’s emergence in universities, museums and the art market.