You Can Call me Nana
Will Harris
With this intimate book, Harris confronts the complexities of coping with his grandmother’s progressive dementia. For Evelyn Beckett, ten years ago was now ten minutes ago. She was both lost and reborn.
As the photographer mined the archive of her life, he deconstructed and reconstructed images in an unconscious collaboration with her. He pieces together their story by working with transcriptions of their conversations along with images of his family home and photographs he intervened with—attempting to draw nearer inside her mind as Nana’s clarity slowly fades away. Like dementia itself, this personal book is nonlinear and at times confusing, but Harris’s gaze on his grandmother’s condition consistently remains tender and subtle.
As the photographer mined the archive of her life, he deconstructed and reconstructed images in an unconscious collaboration with her. He pieces together their story by working with transcriptions of their conversations along with images of his family home and photographs he intervened with—attempting to draw nearer inside her mind as Nana’s clarity slowly fades away. Like dementia itself, this personal book is nonlinear and at times confusing, but Harris’s gaze on his grandmother’s condition consistently remains tender and subtle.
