Sherrie Nickol

Chrysalis gathers the earliest photographs of Sherrie Nickol, made in the late 1970s and largely unseen until now. Shot on film in natural light, the work centers on young women captured in intimate, unguarded moments, alongside portraits of the American South where Nickol grew up. Chrysalis brings together, for the first time, the earliest photographs of Sherrie Nickol, work made in the late 1970s that has remained largely unseen for nearly half a century. At its heart, the book is a sustained study of young women, photographed primarily in Cincinnati, where Nickol was a college student, capturing her subjects in bedrooms, hallways, staircases, and window light, in states of reverie, intimacy, and quiet self-possession. Alongside these portraits, Nickol turns her lens on the streets, landscapes, and communities of the American South where she grew up, documenting Osceola, Arkansas, the Mississippi Delta, and New Orleans.

The title Chrysalis reflects the nature of the work as a whole: photographs made at the earliest stage of a photographic practice, capturing young women at a moment of transformation and becoming. Nickol's ability to generate trust with her subjects gives the portraits an unguarded quality rare in work of this kind. All photographs are shot on film in natural light and presented with full black borders, connecting Nickol to an earlier generation of photographers. At a time when interest in analog photography continues to grow among collectors, institutions, and general audiences, Chrysalis arrives as both a significant rediscovered archive and a timely document of 1970s American life.