Ken Schles photographer

 

A personal note:

I had been thinking about memory (and forgetting) more concretely around this time, as I was in the throes of confronting a troubling situation involving my two elderly parents. They had both been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and were insisting on taking care of themselves in their own home, with as little help or outside intervention as possible. At first this seemed empowering: a bid for continued self-sufficiency. But they were isolated and argumentative. Still refusing most intervention as an attack on his autonomy, my father became increasingly dangerous to himself and to those around him (driving while functionally blind, for instance), as well as violent and abusive–never mind the house falling into disrepair, my mother's diabetes, stroke and broken nose.

From the preface:

Light as a Metaphor

We negotiate our elusive lives between spaces of dark and light, between incoherence and significance, between ignorance and knowledge, between our 'two eternities of darkness.' Knowledge illuminates the world; it brings light to perception, deepening our relationship to what we encounter. It reveals the nature of things, just as an oculus brings light into a dark chamber. Oculus takes us on a journey that points beyond the shadow-play of images. It is a meditation on the nature of perception and existence in the gray light of this world.

Oculus, a photographic book about images, memory, and the metaphor of light.

96 pages; 35 plates.
Published by Noorderlicht.

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