July 27, 2012
I’d like to share a story with you, a splendid story.
I began crafting this journal years ago, when I was searching for a way to understand my mother Rosa. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and I was coming home from ‘Away’ after a long absence. I remember that moment of insight when I understood, with sparkling clarity, that my camera would be my paper and my eyes would be my pen and Rosa would be my story’s artful hero.
I made pictures of Rosa for 10 years. Her story
became, through my camera’s lens, a richly textured narrative about family, everyday life, relationships and home and hospital landscapes. Love, memory, change, mind, beauty, the photograph, light and shadow, hands, windows and space and time- above all time- became themes and questions that wove themselves in and out, over and under in my visual journal; indeed, these themes were natural metaphors for Rosa’s illness. Throughout my story, the camera held my hand, allowing me as daughter and artist to stand back and to step in – the duality of detachment and intimacy.
In my next entry I’ll tell you about the beginning of my journey as daughter and artist. I’ll talk about the Art of Photography and the power of the arts as creative coping tools. Feel free to come along, and please share with me: how do you imagine yourself artfully engaging with the challenges of illness?
- Follow Judith’s Photo Odyssey
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The Portrait: Simple Yet Complex, Obvious Yet Profound Part 1: The Eyes
By Judith Leitner Over a century and a half ago, most folks were unable to create tangible visual links to their past. Many lacked the financial means necessary for creating pictorial inventories of themselves and their ancestors through the pricey art of Portrait Painting. Then, in 1839, Charles Daguerre in France and Henry Fox Talbot in England both announced that they had devised a way to ‘fix an image’, and the art and magic of Photography was born. With its affordable price tag, this clever novelty would enable everyman to express a primal, compelling need: to record, share and Read More…
Tagged Under: Alzheimer, Alzheimer's, art, camera, creative coping, dementia, detachment, featured writer, intimacy, judith leitner, lens, metaphors for illness, photography, portrait -
Seeing Light And Shadow
By Judith Leitner It all begins with light and shadow: opulent daylight softly slipping through a window and illuminating a lovely face, deep shadows stretching across wide valleys and cavernous crevices, dazzling light glistening on ice or crafting strange forms along sand dunes, elongated shadows within dawn’s emergent light and dusk’s fading glow, dense light within grey fog, mellow open shade on a bright summer day, harsh and calculating flash light in a dark room: these and an infinite array of other expressions of light and shadow are the primary shapers of meaning in a photograph. Indeed, the word ‘photography’ Read More…
Tagged Under: Alzheimer, Alzheimer's, art, camera, creative coping, dementia, detachment, featured writer, intimacy, judith leitner, lens, light, metaphors for illness, photography, power of the arts, shadow, speaker -
Rosa: A Story of Love and Memory
By Judith Leitner July 27, 2012 I’d like to share a story with you, a splendid story. I began crafting this journal years ago, when I was searching for a way to understand my mother Rosa. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and I was coming home from ‘Away’ after a long absence. I remember that moment of insight when I understood, with sparkling clarity, that my camera would be my paper and my eyes would be my pen and Rosa would be my story’s artful hero. I made pictures of Rosa for 10 years. Her story Read More…
Tagged Under: Alzheimer, Alzheimer's, art, camera, creative coping, dementia, detachment, featured writer, intimacy, judith leitner, lens, metaphors for illness, photography, power of the arts