Artist turns her work into love letters to husband fading into the fog of Alzheimer’s


Sara Holbrook:

You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you look at my work, but you get it.

This is called Rinse Cycle. It was a very, very bad day. It just shows intense frustration. So, we both love Paris, and that was my place for shooting with my camera. I just felt so alive there. In October 2019, I was walking around Paris with Foster. I had been taking photographs, and I saw some people gathering.

They were carrying these life-size cutouts of people, and I was just fascinated. I wanted to take a photograph, and it wasn’t long at all, but I turned around, and Foster was gone. And after an hour of looking, I came back to the hotel, and Foster was there with this lovely young man, and the man said that he, in fact, was a researcher in Alzheimer’s.

And Foster found him in the whole city of Paris and went up to him and asked for help. Absolutely amazing. I kept him far longer than anybody said that I should have at home, because I loved him. And putting him somewhere just didn’t seem right, but, eventually, I had to do it.

We were really close to one another. And even when he was in memory care, we had fun. I danced with him when I would go in. You know, it was still very intimate.


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