According to the office of National Statistics there are now 1.1 million people over the age of 85 in the UK, and the 'oldest old ' - those over 85 are the fastest growing age group in Britain. Between 1981 and 2013 the 'oldest old ' has risen by 84%. Increasing numbers of these oldest people in Britain are living alone.
Isolation is not an inevitable side-effect of the ageing process, but the life events associated with older age can leave people vulnerable. More than one million people in the UK are suffering the misery of isolation. The Age UK charity research discovered that nearly half a million pensioners only leave their houses once a week, and a further 300,000 are entirely housebound.
I wanted to address the issue of isolation within the elderly by its symbolic representation. Within each image the elderly person faces away from the viewer, so denying the presence of the viewer, with no ability towards identification, in doing so the viewer themselves becomes severed from the image and isolated.
I have endeavored to summon a confrontational experience from the viewer based on fragments and contradictions in the images systematic order and by violating spatial logic I have attempted to identify each person/image with the symbolic representation of isolation.
