“I wasn’t close to my mother,” said photographer and filmmaker Lori Grinker. “She never told me she loved me, and our relationship was strained by my parents’ divorce and my brother’s death from AIDS in 1996. And yet, during the last year of her life, we found an intimacy that we’ve never had before.”
During that last year, Grinker recorded her mother’s battle with dementia and a terminal cancer diagnosis. It started in March 2020, when the US shut down due to the spread of the coronavirus. “I went to Florida to help her move into an assisted living facility, a plan that was suddenly derailed by covid,” she said. “Instead, I became her housemate, her cook and her carer for the next three months.”
That’s when Grinker began photographing her mother’s life and, she said, her pain. All the little things that became part of Audrey’s last few months on earth. The food she ate, the pills she swallowed, the waiting rooms she inhabited.
These photographs, which document the breakdown of a person, both in mind and body, received the Bob and Diane Fund Award, which encourages visual storytellers to produce stories about Alzheimer’s disease or dementia to raise awareness about these diseases. Organized by Gina Martin, the fund is named after her parents, who faced similar battles with Alzheimer’s. Past winners include Jalal Shamsazaran, Stephen DiRado, Carole St. Onge and Maja Daniels in. “As a daughter of Alzheimer’s, I really connected to Lori’s photo essay of her mother’s journey,” Martin said. “Lori captures the loss of her mother in a quiet, respectful and dignified way.”
“The judges talked about how picture essays sometimes suffer when told chronologically – but not Lori’s story about her mother,” said photographer Chip Somodevilla, one of this year’s judges. “Lori marked the march of time, and the toll of her mother’s illness, with such skillful photography that the flow felt natural.”
“From details to poignant moments, we follow the journey of this proud woman who loses her sense of self,” added Sarah Leen, another judge and a former director of photography at National Geographic.. “Lori takes us on this journey of a mother and a daughter with an empathetic eye that asks us to consider our own relationships and mortality.”
Faced with her mother’s illness, Grinker said that what kept them apart no longer mattered. “In fragility and weakness and loss, one can discover that there is something more important,” she added. “I hope these images will help others to recognize the importance of all the little things and the memories attached to them. And how the smallest gesture of help is priceless.”
With the $5,000 from the grant, she plans to produce a book and an exhibit. “My mother agreed that I could share her story,” she said. “I’ll do it so that it can become a little easier for someone else to navigate their own journey.”
