“Many people think dementia is just a part of ageing, but the truth is it’s caused by physical diseases. The damage caused by Alzheimer’s can lead to a brain weighing around 140g less than a healthy one.” Alzheimer’s Research UK
Coming Undone uses the unravelling of physical objects as a metaphor for the disintegration of self caused by dementia: evoking fragility, coherence lost, and the memory of what was once whole.
My love for still life photography gives me the opportunity to offer the viewer a window, a clear and transparent perspective of physical objects that I put in front of my lens. An opportunity to showcase the inanimate in ways that evoke, arouse and inspire others through my inquisitive practice in playing with light.
This project, Coming Undone, based on dementia has pushed my creative limits. It has inspired me to look at how my still life work can function metaphorically rather than in a nonmetaphorical context. The challenge was to create a body of work that will hopefully evoke a feeling of fragility, create a sense of unravelling, to serve as a metaphor for the struggle to remain coherent in a world that is gradually losing its shape.
Yet even in the damage and destruction caused to the objects that I have photographed, there is still an essence of beauty, a memory of what was once whole, there but now fragmented, a memory broken but not gone, unable now to put the pieces back together. A visual representation of the damage caused by dementia.
Gareth Reed is a UK-based photographer specialising in portrait, editorial, and still-life photography. Holder of a First-Class BA from Staffordshire University and an MA in Photography from Birmingham City University in 2017, he now operates out of his studio in Staffordshire.
Gareth builds images that “evoke, arouse and inspire” through an inquisitive practice rooted in mastering light, balancing technical precision with emotional resonance. His work has been published in portrait and editorial commissions and shown in university exhibitions.