Initial Ideas

I have been inspired for my project by visiting my great grandparents who both have dementia in a care home. The theme of the project, "Stillness and Memory", inspired me to do a piece looking at how memory fades over the course of our life and can not always be preserved. I have been inspired by the work of Larry Sultan' series "Pictures from Home" and the work of Christopher Nunn documenting the fading memory of David Blackburn. I plan to incorporate the stillness of subjects sitting and thinking, as well as memories that they have at the front of their memory. I wanted to use my great-grandparents in the video, but they are too ill and confused to understand what is going on, and I would hate to upset them. My next plan was going to be using my boyfriend, his father and his grandfather to represent the idea of ageing and losing memory, as his grandfather could suffer from dementia in the very near future, and he struggles to remember some aspects of his childhood and events that have recently happened. However, upon planning a storyboard, I came to realise that the shot list was very extensive and I didn't feel like I was going to portray the idea very well.

After gaining all this feedback and thoughts, I have decided to use my Nan on this shoot, and film her carrying out everyday activities. She can be quite forgetful sometimes, so I am going to film her over the course of a day and edit the footage together to produce a piece based on dementia, but that really has the viewer thinking about what the piece represents. I don't want to spoon feed my viewers, I want my work to be very questionable and informed, but creative and insightful.