MY NAME'S NOT ALZHEIMER

Art always interprets and tells about the disease, and photography is a surprising and complete tool in its story. Alzheimer's disease has often been told photographically in recent years by testifying the severity of this disease and affirming how cruel it is in its progress by drastically affecting the personality, its memories and the patient's affective relationships. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia (representing 50-80% of cases) and is a fatal brain disease that causes a slow decline in memory capacity, reasoning and thinking. Although dementia mainly affects older people, there is a growing trend of cases starting before age 65 (between 40 and 50). In Italy, more than one million people suffer from dementia, more than 44 million in the world, a circumstance that makes this disease "the silent epidemic of the third millennium" according to the World Health Organization. The intention is not to highlight how Alzheimer sweeps away memories and everything that makes us individuals, photographing a bare existence of identity where what remains is suffering and bewilderment, but accomplishing a conceptually opposite work. What moves this project is the will to transmit the intensity of a whole life going beyond the lost and confused looks, beyond the Alzheimer's, beyond the emptying of memory because the identity of the patient is not lost and replaced by the disease. The guests of the "Villa Elisa" Day Center for Alzheimer's and Dementia in Foggia allowed the photographer to make an intense and touching journey in their life still vibrant with emotions and participation, despite the disease. Through the dialogue that took place during the shots and showing them some dear objects, their biographical memory was elicited, which produced a self-conscious grip. Recognize yourself in a photo, remember an important moment in your life, tell about your work, get excited at the memory of the birth of your children, all moments of awareness of their history and identity. In each photo the moment of self-awareness has been captured, underlining the right of the sick to be recognized for the person who has been and who is even though, sometimes, only in some moments. The expressions of their face as sparks of self-awareness and presence, emerging identities that we must look for in a wait made of biographical stimulation and serene enchantment. A metaphor of being there again. Completely. Coloured. Despite all the blackness of the looming disease. "Memory is not what we remember, but what reminds us. Memory is a present that never ceases to pass. " (Octavio Paz)