Stefanie Scheurell

This is a 20 piece slide series from 2004/2005. Ruth Wurmhoeringer, my grandmother, who was born in 1920 functions as the model for this series. For me this work carries individual and personal meaning, and furthermore universal as well as emblematic tendencies are being emphasized. For a long time I have been fascinated by the hilarious and individual character of Ruth Wurmhoeringer, although the continuous decline of her brain and body through age and dementia both alarmed and affected me.

Originally I wished to work with Ruth Wurmhoeringer in order to get to know her pronounced character on a deeper level and to transform it into an image. I began to reconstruct the individual stations of Ruth´s life. In her youth, Ruth dreamt of becoming an actress, but this plan was interdicted by her father.

Her affinity for dressing up, which lasted well into her grown up life, is strongly expressed in my photography.

With time further concerns arose as for example the tracing of the tilting effect between our reality and that of a person with dementia.
Does the parallel world or respectively the imaginary world denote perdition or is it saving the person of the awareness about her/ his innate decreptitude? At which place does the elderly person deem her- or hisself mentally?

Besides all these questions my work grasps upon the beauty, the individuality, the dignity and the importance of the old person.
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Stefanie Scheurell