‘We got naked and covered ourselves in Vaseline’: Katherine Hubbard on photographing her ailing mother

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‘We got naked and covered ourselves in Vaseline’: Katherine Hubbard on photographing her ailing mother

The Guardian · 2 hours ago

Artist Katherine Hubbard spent five years photographing her mother, Antonette Berger, as the latter's memory declined following a diagnosis of LATE (limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy), a condition similar to Alzheimer's. Hubbard set up her photography equipment in her mother's apartment in Germantown, Philadelphia, during the Covid-19 pandemic and transformed the experience of caregiving into an artistic series titled "The Great Room," now published as a book called "One Fifty One" and featured in her solo exhibition at Studio Voltaire in London. The work explores how photography can capture the ineffable experience of dementia and memory loss whilst simultaneously providing moments of levity and connection during an otherwise gruelling time.

The photographs showcase Hubbard's mother with striking authority and grace, framed within the maze-like apartment of a sprawling building she had owned and rented out for four decades. Hubbard deliberately incorporated mirrors into her compositions to alter the power dynamics of the camera and ensure her presence alongside her mother, creating images that convey both connection and the sense of missing one another as memory fades. The project evolved from a painful, confusing situation into an intimate collaboration where both photographer and subject eventually stopped seeing themselves as images, allowing the cameras to create meaningful interruptions in their demanding daily caregiving routine.

  • Photographer documented mother's five-year decline from dementia, creating powerful "Great Room" series
  • Used mirrors and theatrical staging to explore memory loss and caregiving dynamics
  • Project turned grief into moments of connection and creative collaboration between mother and daughter

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