Silent Songs

As opposed to a "traditional" photobook, Hans considers Silent Songs a book of interventions. Primarily, because she manually reworked the images through cutting, folding, collaging, and embroidering them - but, more importantly, because Hans's book originates from the publication of another author: Agnes Louise Dean's Songs for My Grandmother. Written in 1945 and published a year later by Unity Press, Massachusetts, Dean's book - which is the conceptual and visual backbone of Silent Songs - uses verse and illustrations to narrate the childhood and adult life of the Dean's grandmother. Hans came across a copy in an old New York City bookstore.