It’s one of people’s worst fears. To either lose your mind or watch the mind of someone you love slowly disappear. Phillip Toledano explored this photographically in his thought provoking website and book Days With My Father. The work is amongst the best you’ll find on the web.
Cathy Greenblat is another photographer who has been exploring age, though from a more detached perspective than Toledano. Greenblat challenges the notion that people with Alzheimer’s aren’t really, well, people anymore. That’s challenging, especially for those of us who have stopped going to see people we love, because we can’t deal with the pain of feeling that we are unable to reach them anymore.
Cathy was one of the photographers at duckrabbit and Rhubarb’s Photography Still Moving Seminar in London last month. I threw together this EYECUE to show how easy it is to make a short promo of your work.
The interview was ten minutes, I edited it in another thirty five minutes and pulled the whole thing together in IMOVIE in an hour or so. In fact I spent more time trying to get the quality of the compressed video right than I did producing the piece!
The only person I’ve showed this EYECUE to cried. Not because it is particularly emotional or well produced, but because the photos and subject tapped into her own experience of losing someone.
Often, though by no means always, the photography we celebrate, especially in terms of photojournalism, leaves so little to the imagination. The journey begins and ends with the photograph and photographer. The point is to make a big, bold statement. The same goes for photofilms.
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty bored with statement, it smacks of posturing and rhetoric; give me a beer and a conversation any day.
Related posts:
Alzheimer’s, in fresh light – http://duckrabbit.info/blog/2010/07/alzheimers-in-fresh-light/