Bea Nettles has been exhibiting and publishing her autobiographical works since 1970.

Since that time, she has had over fifty one-person exhibitions including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Light Gallery and Witkin Gallery in NYC. Her works have also been shown internationally in major group exhibitions. Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory, a major retrospective opened in October 2019 at the Sheldon Art Gallery in St Louis, moved to the Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY in January 2020, and concludes at the Krannert Art Museum in August 2020. A book by the same name has been co-published by the Eastman Museum and the University of Texas Press.

Her images are in numerous collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Polaroid International Collection, SF MOMA, the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, the Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. Her artists’ books can be found in special collections libraries at universities including Yale (Beinecke), Washington, and Virginia.

She taught photography and artists’ books from 1970-2007 at Rochester Institute of Technology, Tyler School of Art, and the University of Illinois where she is currently Professor Emerita. She was selected for the ACE Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 and the UIUC Art & Design Distinguished Alumni Award for 2020. In 2023 she was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame with two others.

Nettles continues to lecture and teach workshops internationally.