Sunlight and Shadow: The Nudist Photography of Yvonne Gregory (1889-1970)
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
8-3-2025 3:00 PM
Description
Dr. Tania Cleaves, Independent scholar, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Sunlight and Shadow: The Nudist Photography of Yvonne Gregory (1889-1970)
Shot at waist height and dynamically cropped, Yvonne Gregory’s (1889-1970) photograph, Statue (c.1936), presents the female nude as a modern, monumental caryatid. Nude outdoor photography during the 1920s and 1930s grew alongside, and for, nudism (a.k.a. naturism); Gregory’s photograph was shot at a nudist club and reproduced in the nudist journal, Sun Bathing Review.
Gregory was the professional and personal partner of the journal’s “Honorary Art Editor,” Bertram Park (1883-1972). Three years later Gregory would reproduce Statue again in their co-authored art manual, A Study of Sunlight and Shadow on the Female Form for Artists and Art Students (1939), one of several photographic catalogues they had been producing for over a decade, beginning with Living Sculpture (1926). This move was not uncommon: other contemporaneous British photographers of the nude were producing similar training aids, not only for artists but anatomists, while also including the same works in well-respected photography exhibitions and nudist publications.
Gregory is much-forgotten today and remains invisible in histories of photography, including those devoted to women photographers. This paper focuses on her neglected work and the role of women in nudism’s development between the wars in Britain.
Gregory and Park’s daughter, the architect June Mardall, recollected that their nudes date to 1930 when “times were hard”, apparently an isolated incident born of financial necessary. Yet they clearly published their nude photographs in catalogues and nudist publications throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Is this a misremembering, perhaps embarrassment?
How do we situate outdoor nude photography within Gregory’s oeuvre? Such images disrupt traditional categories of “high” and “low”, just as they challenged the definitions of obscenity by occupying the borderline between art and pornography. My talk takes Statue as a starting point, examining the fluid, unfettered (Henning 2018) nature of nudist photography in Britain and Gregory’s place within it.
Tania Cleaves (née Woloshyn) completed her PhD in Art History at the University of Nottingham (2004-2008) and two postdoctoral fellowships at McGill University (2010-2012, funded by SSHRC) and the University of Warwick (2012-2016, funded by the Wellcome Trust). She has published widely on the intersecting modern histories of art and medicine, including her monograph, Soaking Up the Rays: Light Therapy and Visual Culture in Britain, c.1890-1940 (Manchester University Press, 2017). She is currently writing her second monograph, Touchy Subjects: Nude Photography and Nudism in Britain, c.1920-1950, and recently published the article, ‘Out of reach: photographs of child nudists,’ in the journal Grey Room in Summer 2024.
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Cleaves, Tania, "Sunlight and Shadow: The Nudist Photography of Yvonne Gregory (1889-1970)" (2025). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025. 44.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/schedule/44
Sunlight and Shadow: The Nudist Photography of Yvonne Gregory (1889-1970)
Dr. Tania Cleaves, Independent scholar, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Sunlight and Shadow: The Nudist Photography of Yvonne Gregory (1889-1970)
Shot at waist height and dynamically cropped, Yvonne Gregory’s (1889-1970) photograph, Statue (c.1936), presents the female nude as a modern, monumental caryatid. Nude outdoor photography during the 1920s and 1930s grew alongside, and for, nudism (a.k.a. naturism); Gregory’s photograph was shot at a nudist club and reproduced in the nudist journal, Sun Bathing Review.
Gregory was the professional and personal partner of the journal’s “Honorary Art Editor,” Bertram Park (1883-1972). Three years later Gregory would reproduce Statue again in their co-authored art manual, A Study of Sunlight and Shadow on the Female Form for Artists and Art Students (1939), one of several photographic catalogues they had been producing for over a decade, beginning with Living Sculpture (1926). This move was not uncommon: other contemporaneous British photographers of the nude were producing similar training aids, not only for artists but anatomists, while also including the same works in well-respected photography exhibitions and nudist publications.
Gregory is much-forgotten today and remains invisible in histories of photography, including those devoted to women photographers. This paper focuses on her neglected work and the role of women in nudism’s development between the wars in Britain.
Gregory and Park’s daughter, the architect June Mardall, recollected that their nudes date to 1930 when “times were hard”, apparently an isolated incident born of financial necessary. Yet they clearly published their nude photographs in catalogues and nudist publications throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Is this a misremembering, perhaps embarrassment?
How do we situate outdoor nude photography within Gregory’s oeuvre? Such images disrupt traditional categories of “high” and “low”, just as they challenged the definitions of obscenity by occupying the borderline between art and pornography. My talk takes Statue as a starting point, examining the fluid, unfettered (Henning 2018) nature of nudist photography in Britain and Gregory’s place within it.
Tania Cleaves (née Woloshyn) completed her PhD in Art History at the University of Nottingham (2004-2008) and two postdoctoral fellowships at McGill University (2010-2012, funded by SSHRC) and the University of Warwick (2012-2016, funded by the Wellcome Trust). She has published widely on the intersecting modern histories of art and medicine, including her monograph, Soaking Up the Rays: Light Therapy and Visual Culture in Britain, c.1890-1940 (Manchester University Press, 2017). She is currently writing her second monograph, Touchy Subjects: Nude Photography and Nudism in Britain, c.1920-1950, and recently published the article, ‘Out of reach: photographs of child nudists,’ in the journal Grey Room in Summer 2024.
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