These unseen photos capture what it felt like to be young and female in 1970s America

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The young woman doesn't smile. She looks straight down the lens, freckles scattered across her face, hair falling in loose waves. There's no glamour, no performance. But still, that steady gaze makes an impact.

This is one of more than 100 photographs that the New York-based photographer Sherrie Nickol took in the late 1970s, when she was a student in Cincinnati, Ohio. Shot on film in natural light, they've remained largely unseen for almost half a century. Now they're gathered together in a new book from Hirmer, Chrysalis .

There are many portraits here of young women. Friends and peers, captured in bedrooms, hallways, on staircases and in pools of window light. They sit together with pictures of the American South where Nickol grew up, from Osceola in Arkansas to the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans.

What strikes you most is how unguarded the subjects are. The women weren't posing for a fashion shoot or a press photographer. They were simply reading, thinking, looking out of windows, or looking directly into the camera.

In one shot, a woman sits on a bench by a window, a cigarette at her lips and a pair of binoculars held up in one hand. She glances sideways, half amused, half daring the viewer to work out what's going on.

In another picture, a young woman lies sits on a sofa, staring over the top of a newspaper with wide eyes. A headline reads "What's In A Name? Fame". It feels eminently suitable for a collection of photos of women whose identities have not yet firmly settled.

Nickol shot all of this on film, using only natural light, and she makes the most of it. In one portrait, a woman sits in front of an old ribbed radiator. The stripes of her shirt echo the columns of the radiator behind her, while soft light from one side models her face. It's a simple but effective composition that leans into geometry to great effect.

The title, Chrysalis , says it all. In the words of the publisher, it speaks to "a protected space of becoming, of identity not yet fixed, of transition held gently in suspension". These are pictures of young women on the cusp of something, made by a young woman who was herself still finding her way too.

A parallel strand, meanwhile, takes us on a journey around the 1970s south. In one of the New Orleans pictures, two women ride a streetcar, sitting on wooden benches beneath its tall windows.

A younger woman in a knitted hat gazes out at the trees, while an older woman in a beret and tweed coat holds a tissue to her mouth and looks the other way. They're inches apart but entirely in their own worlds.

These Southern scenes broaden the book's scope to family, community and place, from Arkansas farm roads to small-town street scenes in Mississippi.

Chrysalis by Sherrie Nickol is published by Hirmer and will be available in the US from January 2827, following its November release in the UK and EU. It's a 156-page hardback with 112 duotone illustrations, bound in linen with two large tip-ins.