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DEMENTIA

Vincent Delbrouck

In Spring 1999, I started a black and white photographic projetc on the residents of the New Philip, a Brussels institution for demented persons. I wanted to witness their disorientation from day to day, and penetrate the pit of dementia. I followed one person and then another in the large lounge, I observed, I often came back on the same person, good contact, portrait... but all this led to photos too obvious and distant at the same time. Composed with a view to a precise final. Speaking in place of the demented persons. I only kept a few photos of that period. With time, I realised that my work could have sense only in a real exchange of relationships with demented persons met in the heart of their new experience of the world, induced by dementia. Even the same resolution as the sociologist Natalie Rigaux in her work “The bet of sense – A new ethic in the relationship with elderly demented patients” not simply adding dementia to a list of symptoms that we try to correct, but accept them as part of the road of life of the patients. I spent a lot of time with the residents in the institution but especially outside during walks in the neighbourhood, or day trips to the seaside,... I was constantly concerned in my mind to recognise dementia as a significant and perhaps vital thing for them as well as for us. Through them are arising existential questions like those about death, aged people and their role in our society, identity of bodies,... Dementia marks the face and body of these women, but with a clever staging, they always end up being “nothing but life”... Sun, rain, hair in the wind... Maybe it is only the photographer’s illusion who believed these little moments of grace to come true, when the past escapes and comes slightly back, giving place to a shared present, despite confusion and fear of death. Movement gives then the opportunity to feel oneself existing and ambient air gives the tone of aperture to life, far from evidence. Without disregarding their dementia, in order not to identify these women to “what remains” of what they used to be before disease, I just tried to live and express this confrontation. (A book is in preparation with Natalie Rigaux.)



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