Images That Depict Alzheimer’s With Dignity

In photographer Alicia Vera’s portrait of her mom, Concepcion, she gazes skyward, her expression someplace between curious and awestruck. The picture has sufficient stylistic mottling and grain to obscure any type of background, however Concepcion is evident: broad cheekbones, bejeweled ears, eyes filled with marvel—perhaps. Vera is a deeply humanistic image-maker, and it’s unattainable to distinguish between a posed topic and a candid one. She approaches each with generosity.

Isolated, the phrase “va a llover toda la noche,” which interprets in English to “it’s going to rain all night,” looks like a snippet of poetry or track. Just a few years in the past, it was a be aware left on Vera’s door by her mom. Now, it’s the title of Vera’s new venture, and a self-published e-book of the identical identify, documenting Concepcion’s Alzheimer’s illness prognosis and Vera’s expertise processing it. “Every time I go home to Miami, I stay in my childhood home,” Vera shares. “My mom loves to leave notes on the door. I kept this one; a year or so later, when I was taking out all this material I had, I thought, ‘this is exactly what this feels like.’” The portrait of her mom is one in all many in Va a Llover Toda La Noche (2025); alongside Vera’s portraits, the e-book consists of archival pictures of Concepcion during the last a number of a long time, textual content messages, emails, and different private ephemera.

Vera, who is predicated in Mexico City, is an award-winning editorial and industrial photographer, and her private initiatives characteristic a few of her most charming pictures. In “Basketball in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca” (2018), she captured the Copa Mixe, a basketball match for Indigenous Mixe youth in Sierra Norte; for “Stripped” (2009–11), she spent years documenting strippers in Miami and the Bay Area. Her images are devoid of the voyeuristic high quality typically seen in like-minded collection by different artists; as an alternative, she appears warmly welcomed, like a relative. She’s been photographing her family, too, “since forever,” she says. “I think I knew deep down, one day, everything’s going to be so different. Every time I would go home, I would take a ton of pictures.”

Concepcion was recognized with Alzheimer’s illness in 2018, which prompted Vera to start photographing her extra. In a Spanglish epilogue to the e-book, Vera writes, in English: “After my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I felt devastated, overwhelmed, anxious and helpless.” In Spanish, she provides: “Mi mamá se me iba a ir. En mi desesperación de entender lo que le estaba pasando y porque nunca realmente sentí que la conocí, empecé este proyecto llamado, Va a Llover Toda La Noche” (My mother was going to go away me. In my desperation to know what was occurring to her, and since I by no means actually felt like I knew her, I began this venture referred to as Va a Llover Toda La Noche.) Vera’s understanding of her mom’s personal personhood was restricted by the challenges of their relationship—a too-common dynamic amongst moms and daughters, and one which Vera has lengthy hoped to appropriate. “She grew up in Mexico and I grew up in the US, so there were a lot of cultural differences,” she says. “In my 20s, I moved away and realized, ‘I really miss my mom.’ We started having these phone calls, and it hit me that my mom was an entire human … I remember trying to make an effort to get to know her, asking her really specific questions. When my mom got diagnosed, I was like, ‘Wait, but I’m just starting to get to know you.’”

In Va a Llover Toda La Noche, she continues attending to know her. There are childhood images of little Concepcion, messages she’s despatched to Vera, pages of Vera’s personal journals: “My mom, mi hermosa, who I’ve been terrible to for so many years, has Alzheimer’s. Mi mami …. There’s medicine, pills, and patches, but she’s refusing to take anything despite her telling us that she would do everything possible …. Mi bella madre ….” The final sentence is interrupted by a drawing. Vera repeats mi madre, my mother, like an incantation. She finds parallels between their lives in Mexico City, a long time aside — a selfie of Vera within the grass sits side-by-side with an analogous photograph of Concepcion at practically the identical age; each are in the identical pose, maybe on the identical seaside.

In up to date portraits, Concepcion opens a pair of sliding-glass doorways, holds two halves of a peach, watches the plush treetops of her Miami yard, blocks the solar with the shade of her palm. Vera was dedicated to not portraying her mom from a photojournalistic distance, particularly as a result of she hasn’t proven her the venture. “Even though she’s pretty advanced now, my mom continues to be my mom … She can perceive if I’m sad. If I were to give her the book, she’d sense I’m grieving her, and I don’t want to cause her any stress.” Consent is a touchstone of Vera’s apply; in its absence, she emphasised Concepcion’s dignity. “The projects on dementia and sickness that I was finding — it felt like I was seeing the same pictures over and over: a hospital bed, medicine. I knew my mom would not like that.” Vera’s mom is gorgeous — and, Vera says, a proud Leo. “My mom talks about having been ‘the hottest person in the room.’ If I didn’t get her consent, what would she say if she saw a picture of herself looking ill? She’d be pissed off. For me, her dignity was front and center.”

Vera acknowledges, as properly, the dearth of dialogue round how households and caretakers course of the expertise of sickness, which led to her partnership with the Patient Caregiver Artist Coalition, a nonprofit devoted to advocacy, storytelling, and affected person assist. They associate with sufferers, artists, healthcare organizations, and media to spotlight extra intimate perceptions of the affected person and caregiver expertise. “The founders felt that the images healthcare providers and media outlets were using to talk about illness were often cliché stock photography. They want to promote photographers who are doing something different.” Vera has given a public discuss with the group, who proceed to assist and promote her venture.

One picture of Concepcion and Vera collectively, from the early aughts, is especially hanging; it’s pale, and the 2 ladies’s faces look practically equivalent. It’s overlaid with textual content: “Today was the first time she didn’t recognize me. Something broke in me.” In our dialog, I requested Vera what she’d realized about her mom by the method of placing the e-book collectively. After a selected period of time shared with one other particular person, turning into a caregiver is almost inevitable; additionally it is difficult. “No matter how angry she ever was, she always came back to loving me,” she replied. “I’m grateful for the way she showed up for me all these years and continues to show up for me, even though she’s sick. She’s shown me how expansive love can be.”

Va a Llover Toda La Noche (2025), with textual content and pictures by Alicia Vera, is self-published by La Chancleta Voladora. It is accessible for buy on the artist’s web site.