Flat Granny and Me: A Suspension of Disbelief, 2012 - ongoing


Photographing my grandmother for the last ten years of her life, I often considered her my collaborator. Since her death, creating alongside her still feels like a necessary part of my process. Taking influence from my interest in the Victorian traditions of post-mortem photography and the photographic stand-in, and the contemporary Flat Daddy (photographic cut-outs of deployed soldiers inserted into the daily life of the absent soldier's family), I created “Flat Granny” as a stand-in for my grandmother.


Flat Granny is a life-sized cardboard cut-out of my grandmother made from the photographs I took of her while she was alive. After her death, my grandmother remains an important character in the ongoing narrative of my work. In an attempt to extend my collaboration with my grandmother beyond her death, I created Flat Granny. She began as a simple cut-out. However, in interest to reanimate her still image, I turned Flat Granny’s photographic body into a costume. Flat Granny and Me: A Suspension of Disbelief is a performance for the camera that juxtaposes the two-dimensional with the three-dimensional, the recorded with the real, challenging the role of the camera and the photograph.

Copyright © Jenny Fine 2017;
All rights reserved.
Using Format