Happy 2023!

Thank you so much for dropping by in 2022 and all the best, all the happiness, and all the love for 2023!

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A Woman's Single Pure Life and a Man's Double Life

“I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.”

Sylvia Plath

photograph of Sylvia Plath via

Exiles. By Josef Koudelka.

“To be in exile is simply to have left one’s country and to be unable to return. Every exile is a different, personal experience. Myself, I wanted to see the world and photograph it. That’s forty-five years I’ve been travelling. I’ve never stayed anywhere more than three months. When I found no more to photograph, it was time to go.”

Josef Koudelka

Above: Exiles. Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Bouches-du-Rhone, France, 1974

Koudelka’s life has been one of relentless restlessness, constantly travelling and never settling. Having picked up photography in 1967, Koudelka photographed the Soviet invasion of Prague, publishing his photographs under the initials P. P. (Prague Photographer) for fear of reprisal to him and his family. In 1969, he was anonymously awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal for those photographs. Koudelka left Czechoslovakia for political asylum in 1970 and shortly thereafter joined Magnum Photos. His constant state of exile began, and he was stateless until being naturalized in France, receiving a French passport in 1987. (literally via)

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Above: Exiles. Portugal, 1976

He photographed the gypsy population, minority groups, and everything that is destined to become extinct, to be ‘exiled’ in some way – it became a lifelong journey of photographic documentation that still continues to this day. (literally via)

photographs via and via

Quoting Judi Dench

"Anything that we can do to improve the lives of elderly people is welcome so far as I am concerned."

Judi Dench

photograph via

David Goldblatt (II): Particulars

In 1975, David Goldblatt discovered his fascination for details of people's bodies and for six months continued to pphotograph these very details - placement of hands, ears, arrangement of limbs. It was the body language he wanted to capture, the clothing, the decoration with which we often declare our values, he said (via).

‘There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’” As I study the faces, the familiar landmarks and everyday scenes, I search for their meaning, trying, like Goldblatt, to understand. The series Particulars, where Goldblatt captures close-ups of a subject’s hands, their knees, their ears, stands out for me. As I look at them, I imagine him asking: “Where in the body does hate live? Where does love live?”

Susan Sontag

“I was always struck by the need to make photographs that were somehow relevant to our society, to our situation in dealing with apartheid and the opposition to it. But I wanted somehow to be free just to photograph the things that I found beautiful.”

David Goldblatt

photographs via and via and via and via

David Goldblatt (I): "I am not an activist. I very seldom take an active stand on something."

“I’ve always said quite explicitly that I can never deny my complicity in the South African scene during apartheid because to draw breath here—just to draw breath—you became complicit. There was no aspect of life in South Africa that was not pervasively penetrated by apartheid. No life, and no aspect of life.”

David Goldblatt (photographer, 1930-2018)

“I was asking myself how it was possible to be so apparently normal, moral, upright – which almost all those citizens were – in such an appallingly abnormal, immoral, bizarre situation. I hoped we would see ourselves revealed by a mirror held up to ourselves.”

David Goldblatt

“During those years, colour seemed too sweet a medium to express the anger, disgust and fear that apartheid inspired.”

David Goldblatt

photographs by David Goldblatt via and via and via and via and via

Fathers of Daughters

According to a study published in 2018, having a daughter affects men and women differently. Fathers show a tendency to hold less traditional attitudes to gender roles (traditional male breadwinner and wife as a homemaker) if they have a girl in school age. The authors asssessed a sample of parents spanning two decades (1991-2012) and found strong evidence that having daughters particularly decreased fathers' likelihood to hold traditional attitudes to traditional gender roles when the girls reached school-age (by 8% when in primary school, by 11% when in secondary school) (via).

photograph of Tony Curtis with his daughter via

The Dementia Statements

We have the right to be recognised as who we are, to make choices about our lives including taking risks, and to contribute to society. Our diagnosis should not define us, nor should we be ashamed of it.

We have the right to continue with day-to-day and family life, without discrimination or unfair cost, to be accepted and included in our communities and not live in isolation or loneliness. 

We have the right to an early and accurate diagnosis, and to receive evidence based, appropriate, compassionate and properly funded care and treatment, from trained people who understand us and how dementia affects us. This must meet our needs, wherever we live. 

We have the right to be respected, and recognised as partners in care, provided with education, support, services, and training which enables us to plan and make decisions about the future. 

We have the right to know about and decide if we want to be involved in research that looks at cause, cure and care for dementia and be supported to take part. 

The Dementia Statements

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photograph of Monica Vitti via

Wè

Last year, the brand PANGAIA released a film honouring Black and queer communities. The film was directed by Rodney Passé, the people portrayed are a DJ, an urban educator, a stylist, and a musician.

(...) these community activists take a tour of places in Brooklyn that evoke a sense of collective care and resilience. Woven throughout this uplifting portrait of Blackness and queerness is the soft caesuras and storied stanzas of an original poem written by Jasmine Mans, who is also featured in Wè.

::: Watch the short film: Wè

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image via

A Narrative Review of Alzheimer's Disease

Misconceptions associated with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) are widespread and do have a profound impact on both people with AD and their caregivers. The stigma around AD causes negative effects  leading to isolation, decreased quality of life, low self-esteem, and poor mental health. It also makes people avoid help-seeking behaviours which again results in delayed diagnosis and little utilisation of health and social services (Rosin et al., 2020).

AD is identified as so-called non-normal ageing, the patient becomes a "non-person", their being destroyed, their body left to be managed in a life without quality, a "living dead" without independence and dignity. The social construction of turning AD patients into zombies dehumanises them and leads to significant stigma and associations as incompetent, burdensome to the family and the system, inable to contribute to society. Compared with other illnesses, such as cancer, Alzheimer's Disease elicits lower intent to help and make donations.

Negative portrayal in the media and the medical field lead to fears and stigma in public perceptions. Advertisments show them in the final stages of the disease, looking lost and infantilised, which furthers stigma and marginalisation. While people with AD desire to partake in "the societal norm of productivity", media portrayals show the opposite. Aspects of dementia patients' interest - such as finding meaning in the disease and learning from it - are not discussed in popular culture.

Furthermore, AD and mental illness are often confused, causes and symptomatology misattributed, which, again, can generate stigma. According to research findings, there is greater stigma around mental illness when it is attributed to one's own behaviour and is hence seen within their control to prevent. A survey carried out in the US demonstrated that 35% of the respondents believed AD was a mental illness. Those who did believe AD was a mental illness also rated symtpoms more severely, i.e., were more stigmatising.

While symptoms of dementia are surely not "normal" effects of ageing, particularly in the early phases of AD distinctions are not always clear. In addition, the general public seems to believe that AD (and dementia in general) is a "normal" part of ageing not knowing how to differentiate between so-called normal symptoms being part of ageing and symptoms of dementia. This misunderstanding may prevent diagnosis but also increase stigma since ...

believing that dementia is a normal age-related process may further a belief that the symptoms of AD are character faults and are not caused by neurodegenerative reasons, increasing perceived causal responsibility

Caregivers experiencing stigma may start avoiding social relationships, hence isolation and depression. They may lose jobs, lose social relationships including those to family members. Extended family members might interact less frequently with caregivers which again puts more pressure on the latter and prevent them from searching for services that can reduce their burden. According to Alzheimer's Association, in 2019 alone, 49% of primary caregivers suffered from depression. In fact ...

A study demonstrated that adult children’s perceptions of being stigmatized by the association with their parents with AD increased their negative caregiving experiences beyond the effects of the behavioral problems associated with AD [70]. (Rosin et al., 2020)

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- Rosin, E. R., Blasco, D., Pilozzi, A. R., Yang, L. H. & Huang, X. (2020). A Narrative Review of Alhzeimer's Disease Stigma. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 78(2), 515-528. 
- image of the great Monica Vitti via