My Spirit Muse

This work, a small study of digital images taken mostly during European sojourns, represents the spirit of my late husband Foster, who died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

In life, he was my muse. I photographed him throughout our years together. In these photos, I hope to highlight the kind, warm and playful person he was before the onset of Alzheimer’s, thus depicting his gradual fading away, so unique to the disease, and show the influence of his spirit and spiritedness after death. In my heart, I carry with me always his loving and giving personality. By creating these series of photographs, I hope to illustrate that one’s spirit continues to influence those still living and that these influences matter, not only to a person but for future generations. This work represents an emotional antidote for me to my previous series, “99 Problems”, in which I articulated the frustrations of a caregiver to a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease. In many ways, Foster is a stand-in for every person whose life has been ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease, and all these lives matter.

In reworking these earlier photographs of Foster, I selected him out from the context of the picture, then reduced the opacity to make him appear as an apparition back inside the photograph.

I see this work either as a stand-alone exhibition or as the “Part B” of an exhibition that also includes work from “99 Problems”. In showing both, people, hopefully, will be able to experience the clenched chest, the tightness I always felt while caring for Foster as his thoughts and actions became more erratic, and then to understand the letting out of breath when all was said and done and I was left with the better recollections of our many years together juxtaposed against my loneliness.

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