Pain May Be Inevitable but Suffering Is Optional by Sarah Basha

This photo is of Edith, one of the 13 residents of an Alzheimer’s ward in an independent nursing home I visited during 3 years, capturing her portrait—on Polaroid because Polaroids fade. I had this idea one day when reading that people who work with Polaroids do all sort of things to retain the photo. I realized we always get so attached, want to retain things and people, afraid of the passing of time, of the fading whether it is of time, our lives or as with dementia, memory. Yet my experience as a caregiver taught me that when we let go of attachment, of how things were, how the person we love “was”—in my experience, my father—how we imagined life would be, there lies the opportunity to grow, learn, and experience things you’d never imagine, see things more deeply, discover ourselves but also them. So when my father passed away, I decided I would make this series, focusing on the light, focusing on the (beautiful) people that have dementia, an ode to who they are regardless of this terrible illness. And so yes there is pain, but how we respond to it alters its experience.

More technically this is Polaroid film, black and white, made by The Impossible Project; photograph made in 2018 of Edith, in the St. Monique Nursing Home in Brussels, Belgium, shown during September 2018 during Alzheimer’s Awareness Month at Gallery Grosvenor El Harar, in Brussels.

About Edith
Edith nurtures space, that which sits between breaths, between people, between words. Like the majestic trees that she loves, she is a keen observer of the world; she likes to be amongst others, yet is independent and free. She is guided by her own nature, her intuition. She seeks beauty. She always loved writing. When she first came to the nursing home she’d often add notes to the nurses’ daily journal. What betrayed her was the fact that her handwriting was so beautiful.

Sarah Basha is a storyteller and emerging conceptual artist. She worked in leadership and personal development before becoming a freelance creative & content strategist, helping digital agencies and brands find and share their stories. In 2015, when she lost her father and became a mother, she had the existential urge to reconnect with her art and tell more personal and meaningful stories. Sarah’s art explores the themes of memory and identity using primarily photography, words, fiber, and collage, and is marked by its constant duality both in its form and substance—a constant conversation between materials, between the past and the present, between herself and the other. In 2018, Sarah presented What Remains, a Polaroid series of people with Alzheimer’s that celebrates who they are and what they cherish. It is also about the passing of time, Sarah’s experience of navigating loss, and how we construct, capture and hold on to memories as a way to connect us to people and places that transcend time and space.