Imitating Life
The Audacity of Suzanne Heintz

In 2000, at a time when the idealised family continued to shape social and advertising imagery, American photographer Suzanne Heintz decided to respond with humour to the repeated comments about her single status. Raised in the Mormon faith, in which marriage, motherhood and the patriarchal organisation of the family play a central role, she bought a mannequin husband and daughter and began staging scenes of an ostensibly perfect family life with them.

Inspired by American advertisements, postcards and television series from the 1950s and 1960s, her photographs adopt the vivid colours and frozen poses of this domestic imaginary. Beneath their apparent lightness, however, lies a critique of the roles assigned to women, the transmission of social norms from one generation to the next, and the gap between images of happiness and people’s lived experience.

Drawing on more than fifteen years of archival and personal footage, Imitating Life: The Audacity of Suzanne Heintz traces the development of the project, from its early, private staged scenes to its viral circulation around the world. Against the backdrop of the rise of social media, digital self-portraiture and the constant performance of the self, her work takes on renewed significance.

Combining archival footage, video diaries, interviews and behind-the-scenes material from shoots in Paris, London and New York, the film also reveals the physical and emotional demands of her work. At once funny, intimate and political, the documentary portrays an artist who uses exaggeration, colour and comedy to challenge dominant ideas of success, femininity and family happiness.