Jennette Williams spent seven years photographing women in public baths in Hungary and Turkey.

Jennette Williams, a photography instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York, spent seven years photographing women in public baths in Hungary and Turkey. Working long hours surrounded by heat, steam and water, Williams struggled with foggy lenses and malfunctioning flashes to produce a collection of photographs that challenge traditional notions of beauty and aging.

The collection recently won Duke's Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography. The biannual prize includes a $3,000 grant and publication of a book of the photographs. Duke University Press released Williams' book, The Bathers, last month. A reception in her honor will be held Thursday, Nov. 12, in Duke's Perkins Library, where a selection of the photographs is on exhibit in the Special Collections Gallery until Dec. 13.

Williams first became interested in photographing older women in watery environments years ago when she and her children took a swim class.
"Immediately after our class was a water aerobics class of mostly retired people," Williams says. "I noticed how comfortable the women felt in bathing suits. There was great camaraderie in their lounging around the pool. That immediately struck me as something to photograph."

She joined the class and, with the women's permission, began taking photographs of them in and around the pool.

Later, Williams received grants to photograph women in public baths in Budapest and in Istanbul. In centuries-old buildings, women communally wash, steam and soak themselves. At first, the women covered up in towels or shifts for the photographs, but after several years, some became comfortable enough to pose nude. Williams herself often worked unclothed.

"It was remarkable to walk into these beautiful cathedrals of flesh. We have nothing like that here," she says.

Speaking neither Hungarian nor Turkish, Williams communicated with the women through art. "I drew upon the classical poses in western art, and I would often go with a book of paintings to share with my models," she says, referring to paintings by Titian, Ingres and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Williams used a platinum printing process for many of the photographs to give them a dreamy quality she describes as "beautiful, luscious, tonally rich and kind." She shared the photographs with the women as she developed them.

"Once they saw what I was trying to make, they were as dedicated as I was to creating very lush images of themselves," she says.

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Exhibition: The Bathers
Through Dec. 13
Special Collections Gallery, Perkins Library

Reception
5:30 - 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 12
Biddle Rare Book Room, Perkins Library
Information: 684-3009; library.duke.edu/exhibits/Williams/index.html