This is a personal work in progress and is on display for the first time here.

Everything I come in contact with has the potential to be material for a photograph. It is my way to savor situations that are pleasurable and my way to confront things that are uncomfortable. This could not be more true since I started photographing my father twenty years ago.

Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1998. He was 69 but my family knew something was wrong with him long before his retirement at 62. His inability to remember or recognize family and familiar places was alarming. Primarily our mother took care of Dad during the early stages; my brother, sister and I helped during the advancing stages. After a series of strokes and a major cognitive decline, Dad was admitted into a nursing home in the summer of 2004. To this day, throughout the week, my family and I visit Dad.

The photographs that I have compiled throughout the better part of twenty years, at home, in the hospital, and nursing home, painfully witness my father succumbing to the debilitating mental and physical effects of Alzheimer’s. They also express the love, frustration and sadness my family has experienced.

Stephen DiRado
March 2007
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