Honey Belly (2019) is part of Nydia Blas’ photo series The Girls Who Spun Gold. This project came to being between the years of 2013-2016, during Blas’ master’s program in Art Photography at Syracuse University. It is one of 3 photographs by Nydia Blas in the AGBS Collection—next to Resana With Mirror (2019) and Resana with Baseball Bat (2019)—all of which are part of the series The Girls Who Spun Gold. The title of the project was inspired by Virginia Hamilton’s children’s book, The Girl Who Spun Gold (2000).

Honey Belly is a color photograph featuring two black girls in a kitchen. The kitchen is made of dark brown wooden cabinets, gray flooring, and flower-printed wallpaper. The pregnant girl in this image was a senior in high school named Simone. She is brown-skinned and stands center-right with golden honey covering her large belly, dripping into a small pool between her bare feet. She is wearing a brown fur coat, a leopard print bra, and short black shorts. Her hair is in a high ponytail and wrapped in black fabric. She gazes directly at the camera. To her left is a light-skinned black woman with mid-length black and brown box braids, wearing a black fur coat, also barefoot. Her right hand is drenched in honey and rests on the girl’s belly. She also leans on the pregnant girl’s right shoulder. Her gaze looks forward towards the floor.

Nydia Blas intuitively drew inspiration for Honey Belly from James Van Der Zee’s black-and-white photograph, Couple, Harlem (1932). Blas has stated that she does not allow her subjects to smile. Her work is spirit-led and collaborative. Blas borrowed the fur coats in Honey Belly from a friend and shot the photos in a friend’s kitchen. She often knows her subjects personally.

Citations:
Nydia Blas, “Love, You Came from Greatness,” Cornell University, Johnson Museum of Art, Nov. 9, 2023, video lecture, https://museum.cornell.edu/event/nydia-blas-artists-talk/.

Collection of Art Galleries at Black Studies, The University of Texas at Austin