Sunday Spotlight: Virgil DiBiase

Project Title: I Wanna Go Home Now

Artist Statement: When I was in medical school in the 1980s there were 500,000 people with Alzheimer’s dementia in the United States. We used to call it senility but now we know that it not a part of normal aging, it’s a disease. Now there are nearly 6,000,000 people with Alzheimer’s disease in this country and by mid-century, that number will triple, and it will bankrupt our Medicare budget. There are nearly 50 million people in the world diagnosed with dementia and by 2050 150 million of us will have dementia. It is the number one cause of death in the UK and number two cause of death in Germany. If we live to be 80, one in three of us will have dementia and one and two of us will take care of someone with dementia. It is the greatest worldwide epidemic, and no one talks about it.

Alzheimer’s disease was discovered 100 years ago, and we still have no treatment, nor do we have a cure. I am a Neurologist and I could not have imagined at this stage of my career that I would be seeing so many people with dementia. A couple of years ago my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

I started this project five years ago, and initially, it included portraits of my patients. I would go to their homes and spend a few hours with them and their families and make photographs. When they would come back to see me in my clinic, they assumed that I was the photographer who went to their home and socially engaged with them and not as their neurologist. They would recall the safe and casual conversation that we had in their home and not about the last clinic visit. We were friends.

I have accumulated many quotes from my patients and in the past year, I’ve been making photographs of perceptions and illusions and pairing them with their quotes. I aim to create a visual language so that viewers can somewhat imagine and feel the internal state of dementia. After all, we will be them. 

Bio: Virgil DiBiase (b.1963), a son of Italian immigrants grew up in rural northeast Ohio, in the woods. He grew up speaking Italian in his home and speaking English at school and with friends. He thought every kid his age spoke Italian at home.

His father was a photographer and made beautiful 8x10 silver gelatin prints of his family. When he was 10 or 11 or so he accompanied his father to the darkroom and couldn’t believe that an image on a piece of paper, in a tray with water could magically appear before his eyes. From that point on he made pictures, developed film, and made silver gelatin prints, however awful they may be. He thought every kid had a darkroom in their basement. He went on to pursue medical school, is a practicing neurologist and now lives in rural northwest Indiana, in the woods.

His primary focus is dementia, both neurologically and photographically. Dementia is a neurodegenerative process that affects the brain and people lose their memories and words. He has incorporated photography as a way to perceive dementia in a visual and internal way.

You can find more of Virgil’s work on his website.