— Forget Me Not 勿忘我
My grandmother was a dragon. A token of authority, dignity, honour and success, those born into the year of the dragon are considered highly lucky. At 90 years of age she was mother to eight, grandmother to eighteen, great-grandmother to ten and counting—and a sufferer of late-stage Alzheimer's Disease.
Forget Me Not (2014-2019) portrays my experience over multiple trips to visit my maternal grandmother, Kong Fung Tsze, in Sandakan, Malaysia—a process of trying to understand more of who I am and who she is, while watching her lose her independence and sense of self.
When my grandmother first started forgetting, my mother crafted her a number of small “life story” notebooks lovingly filled with images and handwritten memories of their lives together. Ironically and brutally, the more you read your life story, the further along the path of dementia you are, and the less you recognise it as your own. These pages are memorialised and work in dialogue with my own images, providing context to my grandmother’s once full and vibrant life.
Although it's impossible to fully comprehend what people with Alzheimer's experience, this is my visual interpretation of the disorientating, challenging and repetitive nature of the condition, and the feelings that arise from watching the slow decline of a life of someone you cherish.
In loving memory of my grandmother Kong Fung Tsze (1928-2019).
My grandmother was a dragon. A token of authority, dignity, honour and success, those born into the year of the dragon are considered highly lucky. At 90 years of age she was mother to eight, grandmother to eighteen, great-grandmother to ten and counting—and a sufferer of late-stage Alzheimer's Disease.
Forget Me Not (2014-2019) portrays my experience over multiple trips to visit my maternal grandmother, Kong Fung Tsze, in Sandakan, Malaysia—a process of trying to understand more of who I am and who she is, while watching her lose her independence and sense of self.
When my grandmother first started forgetting, my mother crafted her a number of small “life story” notebooks lovingly filled with images and handwritten memories of their lives together. Ironically and brutally, the more you read your life story, the further along the path of dementia you are, and the less you recognise it as your own. These pages are memorialised and work in dialogue with my own images, providing context to my grandmother’s once full and vibrant life.
Although it's impossible to fully comprehend what people with Alzheimer's experience, this is my visual interpretation of the disorientating, challenging and repetitive nature of the condition, and the feelings that arise from watching the slow decline of a life of someone you cherish.
In loving memory of my grandmother Kong Fung Tsze (1928-2019).
Forget Me Not 勿忘我 was exhibited at the Centre For Contemporary Photography, Australia (2021) and the Singapore International Photography Festival (2020). The project has been featured in publications including the British Journal of Photography, It’s Nice That, Booooooom, Sky Italia, and PH Museum. Images from the series were shortlisted in the William and Winifred Bowness Prize (2019) and British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity (2020), with respective exhibitions at Monash Gallery of Art, Australia, and 111,000 feet into the stratosphere as part of a world first major exhibition in space.