Echo and the Failure of Knowing in Judith Fox’s Photographic Project I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s

Abstract

In relationships ‘I’ and ‘you’ become ‘we’; despite individual differences, couples obtain an interdependent identity due to their shared interactions. During a serious illness, biological and biographical disruptions can put any reciprocal relationship under strain. Through intermedial analysis of Judith Fox’s photographic project, I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s (2009), I will explore ways the couple make sense of illness, how illness is communicated through text and image and also to identify the limits of representation. Here the photographs, I argue, solidify their relationship and echo the stuck-in-the-present state of mind brought on by Alzheimer’s.