Ellie Burd

She May Not Remember You

Series

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”20″ display=”basic_slideshow”]She may not remember you is the culmination of 18 months spent surrounding myself with people involved with dementia. From people diagnosed with the illness, to their partners (who are often their carers), and paid carers. Some of these people still live at home, others are now in care homes. Over 850,000 people in the UK are living with dementia, and
61% of these are female.
The project stems from watching my Grandma disappear due to the illness during my childhood and teenage years. Alzheimer’s affected her very dramatically – making her violent, angry, and swear for the first time in her life. I have very few memories of her before the Alzheimer’s took its hold, and she passed away when I was 17.
As a result of this, I have felt compelled to surround myself with people involved with the illness since then, to learn more, and try to help these people more than I ever did for my Grandparents. This body of work is my emotional response to spending time with these incredible people.
The work has a non-linear narrative, echoing the confusion of memory suffering with a form of dementia. The portraits form the moments of clarity that you experience when spending time with people with the illness, where suddenly everything slots into place and they say something that makes sense. For some people, this can happen every few days, or once a week – for my Grandma, this happened every few years. The rest of the imagery jumps around – all the images are linked and relate to each other, but don’t directly follow one after another.
I have witnessed love, loss, strength, resilience and hope whilst making this work, and I can only hope I’ve brightened up these people’s days a little whilst becoming their friends.
 
www.ellieburd.com
instagram: @ellieburd
 
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