Spectator Magazine Review
Through the Eyes Of The Child Mother, Mother documents the disintegration of a parent to Alzheimer's BY LISA MORPHEW The first pictures you see when perusing Mother, Mother, an exhibition of photographs by Lisa Morphew, were snapped before the artist was born. One is of a tiny, wary pixie with a gentleman, presumably Morphew's grandfather. The other is of a young woman descending a staircase, hatted and elegantly stylish. Though developed long ago by other photographers, these portraits are necessary for what follows. Morphew's mother succumbed to Alzheimer's, and her disintegration is bluntly documented here in a collection of photos that requires the representation of the woman who existed before the disease began its destruction. The foremost series depicts Morphew's mother and a woman who seems to be a caretaker undergoing the process of dressing. Most are nudes, starting with "Dorothy's Room," in which every surface imaginable is hidden by fabric except for the woman who stands with her back to the camera, a bra pointed toward us at her waist as she works on the clasp in front of her. In "Say Hello Dorothy," she giggles in a shower, playing at concealing herself with a towel while laughing at being caught. Her face is creased with age, but as she beams, she looks not like an elderly woman, but like a child -- maybe this is the smile the lass in the early photo would have given had she not been so leery of the camera. Any shyness or caution is gone now, and she poses and mugs without fear. In one photo, she impersonates Eleanor Roosevelt, with the aid of a floppy shower cap; in another, she peers out wild-eyed and wild-haired with comb in hand. There are diversions from the silliness that pervades most of this section; "Biopsy" combines a composed glance at the camera with a tangle of sutures taped shut on her breast. The dressing pictures retain life. While she seems to have reverted to childhood (it's impossible for us, unacquainted with the woman captured, to know if allowing herself to be photographed nude and in the act of grooming is something that would have been permitted before the onset of affliction), she is vigorous and energetic, full of movement and humor. For "I Want My Car Back," clad only in shower cap and white socks, she's turned a floral-print chair into the driver's seat and scowls out at the camera. Her eyebrows are knit and her mouth skewed down, but it's somehow self-aware, the pretense of anger rather than the actuality of it. Round a corner, and things change. "Nursing Home Ride" is an uneasy glimpse into what's to come, as she's pushed down a shadowy corridor, her feet bare and cold, protruding from beneath the blankets that cover her lap, as a nurse shifts away from the lens. "My Mother's Gone" echoes the text in a coloring book we see over her shoulder; blue-crayoned deer lament the loss of a parent in a story that will inevitably result in a joyous reunion once the page is turned. It's more than we can hope for. We know how this story will end but can still be stunned by the progression of the sickness. In succeeding images, she's dwarfed in a hospital bed, overwhelmed by the linens, and handrails resemble bars of a cage from which the prisoner lacks the strength to attempt to escape. The vivacity of previous pictures is gone; there's no charming of the lens here, and it's hard to say if there's always an awareness of it. Most touching is the detail of her hands. As she regards the camera with the same suspicion she showed as a child, our eyes are drawn to the perfect manicure that brightens her nails. Unavoidably, it continues, and the merry woman disappears, substituted by one subdued by tubes entering her nose, hands twisted painfully like barren branches, bones visible. For "Starvation," the woman seems to be gone completely, replaced by a mass of bone barely surrounded by skin. These are disturbing pictures, and we may question their need. We can't speak for her cognizance in the initial pattern, but the subject seems to be beyond the capacity of choice by the end, and these images could be interpreted as an invasion of privacy. The last photograph, like the first, is not taken by the artist but makes her motivations clear. Morphew's mother deteriorates in her hospital bed, oblivious to the camera, oblivious seemingly to everything. Morphew herself sits with her and confronts the camera's gaze with the fury her mother no longer possesses. The four walls of images we've walked through have come full circle, traveling from this woman's beginnings to her end, and while they effectively portray the plundering of illness, the individual herself has not been obscured by the disease.