Jane Heller is a Montreal-based photographer. A graphic designer and art director by training, Heller switched gears after twenty years in the industry and went back to college to study photography. Her editorial work has been published in Dwell, Glamour, Fashion, Bicycling Magazine, Arrive Magazine, Report on Business Magazine (Canada), Red Bull (Austria).
Tell me how this touchingly intimate series began?
‘The project began with Pat. Pat is a friend of my friend’s mother. I would see her every year at Christmas gatherings. A very Christian lady with a wild sense of humor, I was told she had a pink bedroom. I was intrigued and asked to photograph her one day. Initially it was going to be a simple portrait but I ended up staying for four hours, photographing everything from her bathroom to the shoes in her closet. In those four hours she opened up to me and told me her amazing life story. I photographed Pat a year before she sold most of her belongings and moved to another province to live with her cousin at the age of 87. This experience has inspired me to create an ongoing series: to capture that fragile moment in time for most people over 80 years of age. I want to present them in all their glory amongst their prized possessions. And by doing so, help tell their life stories’.
There is something overtly feminine about your pictures, which I enjoy. How do you think being a woman influences how you explore a subject?
‘Definitely. How I see the world is part of who I am. It depends on how you define feminine, but for me, it’s less about lace and frills, and more about emotions and feelings. I like to see my photos as an entry point to a space or a place with layers of meaning’.
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Pat and Binks on the same page, who knew that this would ever come to pass. Love the kitchen/workshop depressing and so familiar.