Description
*FINALIST: The 2021 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards
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.
Design by Tiffany Jones
The Author
Based in Pennsylvania, Will Harris completed an MFA in Photography & Integrated Media at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. In 2019 he was a finalist in Photolucida’s Critical Mass and was awarded their MFA Student Scholarship. Will has exhibited in the USA, India, and Denmark, and in 2015 he had a residency at Arteles Creative Center in Finland. In early 2020 he received a Black Creative Endeavors Grant, awarded by Something Special Studios in New York. His first book You can call me Nana was a finalist in the 2021 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards and shortlisted for a Lucie Foundation Photobook Award. It is held in private and public collections worldwide including The Museum of Modern Art (NY), the George Eastman Museum Library (NY), the Central University for Art History (Munich) and the Gabriela Cendoya Bergareche Collection at San Telmo Museum (Spain).www.willharris.co
Reviews + Press
“The photographs loop in affective rhythms that are deeply attuned to the contingencies of memory and the experience of grief. Everything feels present and departed at once. An archive, by definition, is always incomplete, subject to omission or loss, and Harris mines these blind spots with great resonance in his account of Evelyn’s life and illness.” – Laura Larson, Photo-eye
“The playful and sensitive nature in which Harris has navigated the circumstance he finds himself in and his nana’s legacy is both soulful and honest. The photographs linger with you, bringing a smile at seeing a young and healthy Evelyn and awakening a deep sadness at what dementia does to its hosts.”
– Harry Ross, Darwin magazine
“When Will Harris’ new monograph, You Can Call Me Nana, arrived, I was excited to take the journey through the pages of his remarkable visual storytelling. The size of the book sits between the space of a bible and a journal and maybe the book is a little bit of both, maybe it’s a scrap book of sorts, but ultimately it’s a love story of the best kind.” – Aline Smithson, Lenscratch
“You can call me Nana unfolds in a poetic, non-linear fashion related to its themes of memory, home, and familial legacies, mingling material from Beckett’s past and present between blue marbled endpapers. Visually restrained but brimming with attention and care, Harris’s book conveys an evocative portrait of a woman who was deeply loved.” – Jennie Waldow, The Brooklyn Rail
“Harris’s elegaic masterpiece packs a wallop in a small package. A visual ode to his grandmother Evelyn, the book had me in tears from the first pages.” – Dolly Meieran of 10×10 Photobooks, Photobookstore
“Combining the stories that Evelyn told Harris when he was a child, vernacular photographs from family albums, and audio recordings, the photographer comes up with something strangely new, haunting, and at times painfully beautiful.” – GUP magazine
“This book explores the relationship between photography and memory and time and family so beautifully. A true gem.”
– Sara Macel, Photography Program Coordinator and Lecturer at SUNY Rockland Community College
“An unconventional re-imagination of a personal history and family archive. This memoir is deeply personal and at the same time quite universal… it conveys both the sadness and pain of witnessing a loved one suffering from dementia, and the warm memories the artist keeps in his heart.” – Olga Yatskevich, Collector Daily
See more:
Collector Daily review by Olga Yatskevich
Photo-eye review by Laura Larson
Lenscratch review
British Journal of Photography feature, February 2021 Then and Now Print issue (view online)
Strange Fire review
Fisheye magazine feature (French)
Feature in Darwin magazine, Haunting Beauty of a life remembered
Phases mag
C41 Magazine
Lesley University Alumni interview
Selected pre-release features
Strange Fire interview
GUP magazine
Fraction Magazine
Special Notes
*Selected for exhibition, Part of Me… Shaping Mental Spaces, 26 August–20 November 2022) at FOTODOK, Utrecht NL
*FINALIST: The 2021 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards, First Photobook prize
*Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards Exhibition
January 20-February 27, 2022 at Printed Matter NYC
*FINALIST Lucie Photobook Awards – First Photobook Prize (Independent)
*Photo-eye’s Best Books of 2021, selected by Laura Moya, Director of Photolucida
*The Brooklyn Rail: 20 Best Art Books of 2021
*Photobookstore Photobooks of 2021, selected by Martin Amis
*Photobookstore Photobooks of 2021, selected by Dolly Meieran, 10×10 Photobooks
*Favourite Photobooks of 2021, selected by Ola Søndenå, Department of Special Collections, University of Bergen Library
*Favorite Photobooks of 2021, What Will You Remember? selected by by Elin Spring and Suzanne Revy
*Mirrored Society Photobooks of 2021, selected by Julian Lucas
*Holiday Catalogue Selection 2021, Skylight Books
*Curated selection Fiebre Photobook Festival 2021 – Erika Goyarrola, Curator & Professor
*Curated selection Fiebre Photobook Festival 2021 – Eneka Fernandez, Curator
*Bildersturm Recommended Photobook, April 2021
*Photo-eye Book of the Day April 13, 2021
*Bestseller Photo-eye Bookstore, March, June 2021
*Photobookstore Recommended Pick, March 2021
*Curated selection Fiebre Photobook Festival 2020 – Gabriela Cendoya, Collector
*Curated selection Fiebre Photobook Festival 2020 – Tim Clark, Editor in Chief at 1000 Words, writer, curator and lecturer
You can call me Nana is held in the following collections:
AGO Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives (Toronto, CA)
The British Library (UK)
Arts University Bournemouth (UK)
Biblioteca de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (ES)
Central University for Art History, Library (Munich, DE)
Cincinnati Art Museum – Mary R. Schiff Library & Archive (USA)
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ingalls Library (OH, USA)
George Eastman Museum Library (Rochester, NY)
Harvard University Fine Arts Library (Cambridge, MA)
Missouri State University (Springfield, MO)
Museum of Modern Art – MOMA (USA)
École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (Arles, FR)
Princeton University Library (USA)
Rhode Island School of Design Fleet Library (USA)
San Telmo Museum – The Gabriela Cendoya Bergareche Collection (ES)
University of Sunderland (UK)
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Flaxman Library (USA)
SUNY at New Paltz, Sojourner Truth Library (NY, USA)
Syracuse University (NY, USA)
Tufts University – Tisch Library (Medford, MA)
TSU/Pickler Memorial Library Missouri (USA)
UMBC Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery (Baltimore, MD)
University of South Carolina (USA)
University of Vermont Howe Library, David W. Howe Memorial Library (Burlington)
