Shani Nahmias explores the different manifestation of the human body, in particular the female body. She examines conventions of beauty, femininity and inter-sexuality, by confronting the nude body with it's traditional modes of representation, throughout the history of arts.
Shani's attempt is to define the sheer line drawn between perfection and imperfection, thus, she creates scenes where the pathetic mingles with the heroic, the tangible with the spiritual, the aesthetic with the deformed and eccentric.

Shani's work is partly based on self-portraits. In her self-produced images, she plays both the photographer, a role that was once reserved to men, and the woman model, a subject of contemplation. Exchanging identities and shifting between the masculine and the feminine, serves her in examining the relationship between sexes. When others are posing in front of her camera, Shani's interest lies in the delicate texture of photographer-model interaction. By means of the photographic image, She tries to respond and interpret the self-perception of each of her models.

Shani's interest in confronting old and new is expressed in another body of work, where she turns her gaze to the urban environment. Unlike the precise and meticulous work of the studio, in her urban scenes Shani uses a toy-camera, to examine the capability of the photographic medium in concealing or emphasizing different characteristics of places and epochs.

In both bodies of work, Shani uses traditional, black and white photographic processes.