Karla Guerrero is a Mexican photographer from Mexico City, where she lives. Within her artistic practice, she writes articles in a platform named Espacio Gaf dedicated to the investigation and promotion of Latin America Contemporary Photography. Her series Berta deals with her grandmother with Alzheimer’s.
First of all, how did you start photography?
I started while I was studying my bachelor degree. I took diplomas from the Fundación Pedro Meyer and Academia de Artes Visuales in Mexico City.
In your series Berta, you photograph the daily-life of your grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease, introduce us to the project and how did you proceed?
The project took quite time to released I began with some sketches because it was difficult for me to document how the disease was developing in a progressive way and at the same time I was looking towards my family archive in specific the photos of my grandmother when she was younger.
Tell us more about the dialogue you created with your photographs and this souvenir album?
“I want to create awareness there is no cure or proper treatment but hope someday”.
The mix of all emotions and knowing more about the effects of the disease detonated the procedure of working with the originals, at the end her memories are lost and there’s no way to bring them back. For the daily life series was the same emotion of absence in all the spaces from home so my intention with both was to depict the procedure of how a memory is erased.
Has your relationship with your grandmother evolved and how has she responded to your work?
I guess this work help me to understand and to carry on and also to my family. My grandmother is the strongest woman that I know but she can’t relate anything with the images I created.
What do you want people to take away from your project?
Well, I dedicate this to the 44 million people affected by Alzheimer and dementia around the world and to their families. I want to create awareness there is no cure or proper treatment but hope someday. #ENDALZ
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