LAURA HONSE Photography

My grandmother was asleep when I arrived at the nursing home. As I sat there, she opened her eyes and said to me: “You can stay if you sit quietly but I don’t want to carry on a conversation.” It turns out she had a stomach ache but she was suggesting food poisoning. I think a lot of elderly get such suspicions. As she fell asleep again, I tried to take her picture. A few times she opened her eyes slightly, as though spying on me, and I thought I detected accusation there. I had to slowly draw up the shades to get enough light. She looks like a kid in her striped navy & white shirt. She is 100 years old.

My grandmother’s bed with the hose to her oxygen tank.

My grandmother’s walker with oxygen hose.

I found a small culloloid envelope with about half a dozen copies of this portrait inside on a window ledge as I was walking to the market. As I got home, there was a piece of newspaper on the balcony where the cats had eaten some chicken bones with the portrait of three famous women so I made a spontaneous collage.

Photographed in the tub. These fotos were individually burnt.

From a series of Helen pregnant in the bathtub. The photographs were later burnt individually.

Shot naked in the bathtub. The fotographs were burnt afterwards.