The Last Exit 1993 to 1995
 

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“While in college in New York, my family called from Bahrain to tell me of my grandmother’s illness.  She was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Knowing that I probably wouldn’t have the opportunity to see my grandmother again, I asked my mother to take a picture of her and send it to me.  My mother refused, stating that she didn’t wish for me to remember my grandmother “like that”.  My grandmother had been an incredibly strong woman, and her illness could never change the admiration that I have for her.  My mother never took the picture, and I was never able to see my grandmother before her death.  I became obsessed with the selfishness of our practices toward the disabled and aged.  We find the means to put them away, either literally or figuratively, so as not to tarnish our own memory of them.  If no one is looking, how do we know they still exist?  I wanted to photograph these people “like that” because even if they are ill or old, they are still here with us. We can and we should look.”