Tina is a long-term photographic project, an image story that focuses on Alzheime pathology, the loneliness and lack of structures and assistance
Tina is 80 years old, she lives alone and she has Alzheimer’s disease. Her memories are slowly leaving her, wrapped in confusion, often they disappear completely, sometimes she invents new ones, but for her more real than many others. When I started taking pictures of her, I wondered how I could make her interact with the camera without too much invading her everyday life made of small routine gestures.
My doubts and uncertainties vanished when in a short time I realized that those moments with the camera were becoming a sort of therapy for her, an excuse to reactivate certain mechanisms of reconstruction of her memory and identity, all punctuated by tender laughter and moments of melancholy.
At the sight of the camera I surprised her to worry about how was her hair, when for months she no longer cared about her appearance, I saw her looking for objects and photo albums now abandoned and forgotten in drawers for years. I heard her talking and trying to build stories of his past in front of a photo or a personal object. I saw her laugh and have fun and I saw her sad to see me put my Canon in the bag, sensing every time I was about to leave.
In Italy there are about 600 thousand Alzheimer’s patients, equal to 4% of the population over 65. The forecasts for the next years indicate an increase in cases that will make Italy one of the countries most affected by the disease. Very often the condition of the patient is aggravated by loneliness, in a country where there are no specialized structures for patients and there is a limited diffusion of home care.
About Gianluca Ceccarini
I studied Anthropology and in all the field research I’ve always used the camera because I am convinced that images have the strength to tell the complexity of reality often more than words. The images are semantic containers, the photos are always dense structures of meaning.
“….behind every image there is always another image” (D. Crimp)
I’m interested in photography when it tells stories, especially if the stories are out of the ordinary.Some of my shots have been used for anthropological articles in specialized magazines, essays and museum installations. The passion for Anthropological research and Ethnographic photography has inevitably brought me closer to Street Photography and to projects of Visual Storytelling, convinced that among the different photographic approaches there are many convergences and stimulating possibilities of interconnection. [Official Website]
