I’m a neurologist and this is a dementia project. When I was in medical school in the mid 1980s 500,000 people were diagnosed in this country with dementia. We would call this senility. Now 7 million people in this country and 50 million people world-wide are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and that number will triple by 2050. When we live to be 85 years old, one in three of us will have Alzheimer’s disease and one in two of us will take care of someone who has Alzheimer’s disease.

When I started this photo project 7 years ago, I intended to make portraits of my patients in their home, in their safe environment, and in a good mood. We had good conversations, whether it was based in reality or not. Then when they came to my clinic, they knew me as their friend and not their neurologist. They didn’t remember the details of the event or remember how they felt. Social engagement is a treatment for dementia. It creates neurogenesis and synaptogenesis, which is growing neurons within the brain and connecting to other neurons. I cannot prescribe a medication that does this.

About 5 years ago I had the opportunity to show my work to Larry Fink. He said, “You have enough portraits. You need to make perception photos.” I didn’t know what perceptions were. Hallucinations? Delusions? He said, “You’ll figure it out.”

My wife and I have a farm in rural Indiana with wildlife, foxes, horses, and trees. At the beginning of the pandemic I slowed down emotionally, in rhythm with nature. I became aware of things that were there that I hadn’t noticed before: spiders making webs, swallows making nests, and wild mushrooms. And then I began to make perception photos and paired them with quotes from my patients.

What I learned from this is our emotional state in a given moment influences what we see. That is, we don’t come to know the world only through our external senses. We perceive the world differently when we feel pleasant or unpleasant. That’s what we remember. Our feelings.