I have always felt the need to document my life, I know the intensity of this need grew when I was in a car accident in my teens where I lost two friends and I discovered I didn't have any photos of them to remember them by. From that moment on I vowed to never have that happen again. For me, taking photographs has a lot to do with preserving memories and personal narratives and it helps me process events in my life. As I got older I was drawn to photographing people and hearing their stories. I love connecting with the ways we are similar yet different.
When I became a mother I naturally turned the lens on my children and continued to document my life as my family's documentarian and when my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's I knew I needed to document this journey as a way to navigate the ever changing relationship between the two of us. We only lived together from my birth to when I was 10 years old and then I ended up living in the US with my father. Sadly I wasn’t able to visit her very much, sometimes years would go by. But when I turned 25 I returned to Sweden where I was able to build a relationship with her in person as an adult. I ended up relocating to the UK not long after but since then have been making regular visits to see her. We had 8 good years of spending time together before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
When she was diagnosed in 2013 they also discovered three blood clots in her brain which added to the fairly fast decline we experienced with her. Photographing her through her journey with Alzheimer's and documenting the many goodbyes I've had with her helps me process my own feelings and has become a kind of beacon for myself of making sense of a disease that doesn't follow any kind of straight line. It is true when they say Alzheimer's is a long goodbye. It is the longest goodbye I have ever known. As she's gone deeper and deeper into the Alzheimer's abyss this project keeps a connection alive between us. It has become a way for me to look at my own life, to face my own fears I have about aging and is helping me become accustomed to my own mortality. It's making me look at death straight in the eyes and accept it without fear and instead with only love in my heart.
Someone in the world develops a dementia every 3 seconds with Alzheimers being the most common form of dementia. Globally, 55 million people were estimated to be living with Alzheimers diseas and other dementias in 2020, according to Alzheimers Disease International. This number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 78 million in 2030 and 139 million in 2050.
This is an on-going work in progress.
