Joy Gregory subverts beauty standards with her new exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery

It is apt that Joy Gregory’s first major survey show at the Whitechapel Gallery should take its title from a proverb said by her mother. In every room, her words – ‘you catch more flies with honey than vinegar’ – ring true. Here, these honeyed photographs hold a pertinent political message that sticks. Using nineteenth-century photographic processes to explore issues such as race, gender and colonialism, Gregory’s works pack a punch, rendering them all the sweeter for it.

The subversive power of beauty is evident from the onset of the exhibition and her early series, Autoportrait (1989-90). In a succession of tightly cropped, close-up, silver gelatin prints, a glamorous young Gregory poses and pouts like a cover girl. Captured with Voguish verve and monochromatic chicness, these shots juxtapose the compositional, pictorial and material details of photography with a sharp point about western beauty ideals.

If we are charmed by the reflective gleam of the artist’s metallic drop earrings against the starched fabric of her little black dress, then we are equally disarmed by the unzipped back of said robe, the vulnerable gaze of her kohl-lined eyes or the moment her face is hidden behind her hands. Excluded from many fashion magazines at the time, Black women, Gregory implies, should be seen as the beautiful individuals they are by being placed front and centre(fold). Yet in a world where Black models grace the covers of fashion journals less than their white counterparts, the unease and vulnerability visible in these images still resonate today.

Interrogating unrealistic beauty standards through beautiful photography also comes to the fore in two renowned series, Objects of Beauty (1992-94) and Girl Thing (2002-4). If, in the former, the construction of femininity is deconstructed through kallitype prints of hairclips, combs and false eyelashes magnified to monstrous proportions, then the latter’s photograms approach the same issue but with a lighter touch. The hard material objects of Girl Thing go soft, dissolving into ghostly forms against a cyan background. Though no less beautiful and evocative, the trappings of femininity are here stripped down to their poetic essence. Luminous in a sea of deep blue, these ordinary objects become an extraordinary sight to behold.

Beautiful accessories again hide ugly realities in Gregory’s haunting series, The Handbag Project (1998-97). Made during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission following the end of Apartheid in South Africa, The Handbag Project illuminates the dark truth of how wealthy white women exploited Black female domestic labour. Her pictograms of collected luxury bags once belonging to said affluent white women are a sweet riposte to this oppressive era. Appearing a mere shell of its once coveted form, the handbag – or rather, the white female privilege it epitomised – is reduced to a remnant.

Impressive in its scope, skill and sensual sensibility, Catching Flies with Honey demonstrates that beauty can be a weapon and a joy, a trap and a method, but one thing is certain: we’ll be thinking about Gregory’s beautiful works of art, as well as their profound meanings, for many years to come.

Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey is showing at Whitechapel Gallery until 1^st March 2026

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