Alzheimer's Project

An idea that I have had for the theme of stories is a Granddad's child hood or story and what things were like for him when he was younger in black and white, then photos of what things are like now with technology and bright colours representing the child now a days.
         To show this as a piece of work I thought I could link it to my triptych work at the start of our stories project. I could have a photograph of the Grandad with the Grandchild in the middle, then on the left I could have an old book with stained pages with the black and white photographs for the Grandad. On the right I could have a computer screen or tablet with the bright, colourful photographs to show what things are like now for the Grandchild. I thought that I could try to show things like transport, communication and technology.
       I went to a place called Walford Mill in Wimbourne to take some photos in black and white because I had heard that it was an old area with some old buildings. When I got there, most of these buildings had extensions on them, posters and advertisements over them so I had to find different angles to cover these to make the photos look old. This ruined some of the photographs because I could not get the right angle for the image.
        When I arrived there I noticed that the area had been modernised and there was only a few buildings that I could take photographs of.
         This photo was around the back of a cafe so they hadn't updated this area yet. I had to try to move around to stop the tree taking up most of the photograph.

                                               
I found an old mangle next to a river just outside a house so I tried to take photos of this, however, my lens does not have a good enough zoom so I had to crop the photo down to get a clear photograph of it.

After moving around trees, bushes and climbing on posts, I could only get a two clear angles where I was close enough to zoom and get sharp photos.

I thought about technology and how I could show this change and when I saw this sun dial I thought that I could show the difference in how we tell the time with new expensive watches, phones and computers.

I saw an old lamppost through a bush and thought that I could use this bush to frame the lamppost.

Whenever you see an old fashioned film there is always that moment when somebody walks or cycles across a bridge and this old bridge reminded me of this so I took some photographs.

I realised some people were crossing so I waited until they were in the middle of the bridge and there were no cars crossing. After taking this photograph I have thought I will not use it in the final project because I will try to keep more of a constant theme in the photographs by not having people in the old photographs.

For the middle image in the triptych I had two ideas. Firstly, I thought that I could have the Granddad telling the Grandchild a story from an old book maybe on the Granddad's lap or when the Grandchild is going to bed.

The other idea I had was the Grandchild and Granddad sitting next to each other and the Grandchild showing the Granddad photos of a holiday on a tablet or phone or showing a new game and the Granddad looking confused.

However, when I attempted to try this project, I realised that I have no close family or friends that would be young enough for this project. I decided to change my project to Alzheimer's disease. This idea came from the previous project because I did not want to waste the photographs that I had and I did not have much time to create a completely different project. I kept with the theme of old people and thought of my     Great-Nan who has Alzheimer's disease. I thought I could try to portray her blurred image in a small book. I went to places that I remember us going to and places similar to events that happened in her life. I made these photographs blurred to show that she cannot properly remember the things, only some significant events.

I started by going to her care home to take photographs of her. This was challenging because I could not ask her to pose or read the book I gave her because she did not understand what I was telling her.

I then moved on to going to places where I remember going with my Great-Nan and Great-Granddad. I used to go to Tuckton all the time with them so I went there. I wanted to find an old man to act as my Great-Granddad, however, because it was a cold day, there was almost nobody out. I then made my way to Christchurch when it was a bit warmer and found somebody to use. I tried to make the image look like the man was reminiscing and that there was something missing.

I remember walking through Fisherman's walk and playing with my cousins and Great-Nan and Great-Granddad at the bandstand and we would feed the squirrels. Unfortunately, I could not get to Fisherman's walk so I found this one in Christchurch.

Whenever it snowed my Great-Nan would tell stories of how she would have to walk to school for miles in knee-deep snow. 

 I went to Beaulieu Motor Museum to take shots of old cars and replicas of old shops. There was one car where we were allowed to dress up and sit in it so I used to and blurred out the man's face  to show that she doesn't remember him.