Photo project to help the young understand Alzheimers

With over 4,000 people over the age of 65 years suffering from Alzheimers Disease in counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, the chances are we will all have a close encounter with the condition at some stage in our lives.

A unique project which aims to create a deeper understanding of the degenerative brain disease among young people as well as giving them an entirely useful life skill has also had the triple affect of raising a great deal of money for a group which provides vital services to those afflicted by Alzheimers as well as their families.

It was the photographer Alan Guiomard of Yann Studios Photography on Prospect Hill who first had the idea of teaching students the intricacies of photography, often lost in an age of digital phones.

“We were just talking about it in the office last year. Everything nowadays is digitized. Digital photography means the camera thinks for you, it’s so automated. I thought wouldn’t it be good to teach people the basic skills we learned,” he reflected this week.

“Years ago, we used films of 12 or 24. Nowadays you might take 400 pictures for a single shot without thinking. I wanted to teach students to actually stop and think.”

Having encountered John Grant of Western Alzheimers, he was impressed by the passion the Ballindine man exuded when talking about the disease and its devastating impact on loved ones.

As well as providing in-home support services to families in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, Western Alzheimers runs a respite centre in Ballindine, which is about to be extended due to demand, and a respite centre in Athenry, which provides respite, day care and long stay services. It is currently in advanced talks with the Health Services Executive (HSE) to set up a centre on a site at Merlin Park Hospital.

Alan decided to set up a workshop for Transition Year Students teaching them photography skills such as correct lighting, composition, rule of thirds where the subject is placed off centre. John Grant would give them a talk about Alzheimers. Students could then work together in teams to produce a photograph inspired by their understanding of Alzheimers.

The photos would be posted on a Facebook page with the top 24 picked based on the amount of ‘likes’ they attracted. The students behind the 24 pictures were invited to a night in the Menlo Park Hotel where they were asked to give a presentation on what their photograph meant and how they came to realise it. The final 12 were then selected for inclusion in the calendar, which would be sold to raise money for Western Alzheimers.

The results were nothing short of astonishing, admits Alan. The creativity which was displayed in the 58 photographs from the 13 schools simply involved blew him away.

“Some of them were quite abstract – you had an entry from St Raphael’s College in Loughrea called Love is a many petalled thing, with six daisies in a circle with a seventh in the centre with half the petals gone to represent memory loss,” recalls Alan.

“An entry from Gort Community School had a head drawn in the sand, with half of it washed away. They had to wait hours for the tide to come in.

“The Bish had a photo called My Favourite Stranger, with a woman sitting beside her brother, but her brother is only half there. It shows that she knows him on a good day but on a bad day he’s a stranger.”

Over €10,000 was raised through the sales of the calendar. The project proved so successful, they decided to launch it again this year. So far 17 schools are on board.

Alan gives his time for free. This year’s calendar will put on sale in mid-November. The money raised goes towards running the respite centres and providing services for families at home.