What happens when our memories are taken from us, slowly, piece by piece, until there is nothing but emptiness?

Alzheimer’s disease, first described in 1906, is the most common cause of dementia, affecting more than 6 billion people in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the Asia-Pacific region alone, the number of dementia cases is expected to jump from 13.7 million to 64.6 million, with more than 3 million cases in Indonesia, by 2050.

It is a largely invisible and unheard of disease; its sufferers are most often the elderly. As a disease of the brain, the progressive ravages of Alzheimer’s are also invisible. Memory loss and mood swings are often hidden beneath an otherwise healthy body.

In referencing such a disease, the title of Arabella Plouviez photography series “Alzheimer’s: A Quiet Story” inevitably draws emotional attention to itself.

Reflections: Viewers are provoked to reflect on feelings of absence and confusion and upon what has been lost, hidden or forgotten.
Yet in their reticent anonymity, the images point to the ordinariness of the condition and its potential effects on anyone.

It is the experiential aspects of the disease that are referenced in the images, not science or medicine. The pictures speak eloquently of lived absences and of experiences that are beyond visibility and representation.

Looking at the pictures, Plouviez’s narrative approach allows spectators to contemplate and feel the traces of their existence to give an imaginative understanding of how it must feel to suffer from Alzheimer’s.

The images present an empty stillness in once cheerful spaces, provoking viewers to reflect on feelings of absence and confusion, and upon what has been lost, hidden or forgotten.

As a professor and the head of photography at the University of Sunderland in the UK, Plouviez has been shooting for years.

Her other projects have, for example, explored women prisoners in a high security prison and the representation of women in Northern England, among other subjects.

“This work takes a domestic environment, which has been lived in for a lifetime, and the medium of photography, which we so often use as our memory, to explore some of the changes and loss that comes with Alzheimers,” Plouviez said in her artist’s statement for the exhibition.

Stillness: The images point to the ordinariness of the condition and its potential effects on anyone. (JP/Jerry Adiguna)

What happens when our memories are taken from us, slowly, piece by piece, until there is nothing but emptiness?

Alzheimer'€™s disease, first described in 1906, is the most common cause of dementia, affecting more than 6 billion people in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the Asia-Pacific region alone, the number of dementia cases is expected to jump from 13.7 million to 64.6 million, with more than 3 million cases in Indonesia, by 2050.

It is a largely invisible and unheard of disease; its sufferers are most often the elderly. As a disease of the brain, the progressive ravages of Alzheimer'€™s are also invisible. Memory loss and mood swings are often hidden beneath an otherwise healthy body.

In referencing such a disease, the title of Arabella Plouviez photography series '€œAlzheimer'€™s: A Quiet Story'€ inevitably draws emotional attention to itself.