In his early years, my father loved to take photographs and my mother loved to pose for each of his shots. I stumbled upon one of these albums with a significant amount of nostalgia, where inspiration struck me. In a portrait of my mum where the light, containing double meaning, revealed and erased her from the scene. I found my mum of the present, drown in an illness that is slowly extinguishing her from the here and now, from reality. In that melancholic portrait, I found a visual representation focusing on the effects of dementia, which in reality takes her further away from me every day… I had found the starting point for this project, but I still needed to set a clear direction.
This disease is part of my story and that of more than 55 million people around the world. And it was in these 55 million that I found the work of two photographers who were essential to guiding the photographic process that followed. Birthe Piontek and Norma Córdova develop their representations of dementia based on artistic intervention on the object “photography”, from which new meanings and interpretations of the initial object emerge. I therefore undertook to adapt this process to my reality.
I began a process of curating the many portraits of my mother that I had. The selection fell on those that, in addition to their visual qualities such as framing, pose, lighting and appropriate scenery, also conveyed a sense of melancholy and nostalgia from the first glance.
The stage that followed was as challenging as it was rewarding. The first obstacle was to achieve the detachment necessary to start “destroying” the photographs. For each one I tried to find an approach that would make me replicate the feeling of loss, fading and deterioration inherent in the effects of dementia. In these experiments, I used all kinds of materials, always trying to get the best out of their inherent unpredictability. The fluidity of water and paint, the refraction of light and the texture of aluminium foil, the restriction and contraction of lines, the contrast between light and shadow, shape, space, distance and finally the reflection of mirrors. Mirrors carry a strong symbolism, as people living with dementia eventually lose the ability to recognise their own reflection. Each experiment presented its technical and logistical challenges, but with each click the desire to continue, to test, to do more or even to change the approache became addictive and even therapeutic.
The final curation seeks to present the results that emphasise the ideal balance and simplicity achieved between the qualities of the original photograph and the result of its intervention.
