This was the original name for my post several days ago, when I discussed Socrates’ aphorism, “An unexamined life is a life not worth living, for a human being”. [1] I was thinking of the process of examining my own life, which seems to be a never-ending process. So, would Socrates be proud, or relegate […]
I was looking though some pictures today. (No surprise there, I’m either looking through old pictures, old writings, old… doesn’t-matter-what as long as it’s old and in my past.) I have boxes and boxes of photos of my big brother Mike. He is autistic, low functioning and has never spoken. I don’t even know what […]
I’m talking about artistic process, here. Maybe this is a mis-characterization of my ‘brother project’, but I don’t really think so. In art, like science, the artist/scientist is trying to understand something. I am trying to understand my autistic brother. Actions speak louder than words, but words [1] are necessary My mother always told me that […]
My brother Michael is autistic, low functioning and has never spoken. From the late 1980s through the 1990s, my project was to use photography to help me discover who my brother was and how I could relate to him. I wrote the following in the early 1990s about my recollections of Michael from childhood. Sometimes […]
Photography class I was re-reading my journal notes from 1992, at which time I took a photography class from Mary Ellen Mark. She is the photographer whose assignment to me was to spend 24 hours with my brother, Mike. She seemed to think that Michael had a personality, after reviewing my work. This was a surprise to […]
When I used to visit my brother Michael, at his Day Program, sorting was one of the challenges the teacher presented him and his classmates with. “This sock goes with the rest of the socks in this basket,” a classroom assistant would urge. It was a task that eluded him. It is a task that […]
So I started taking pictures of my brother, and I had a vague idea of the book I wanted to write. What happens next? I took more photography courses and classes about refining my vision. I found that I had to filter through advice about composing a photographic memoir and make some decisions. For example, […]
Here I begin a series of occasional posts about my attempts to gather my thoughts, photographs and writing into a coherent narrative about my relationship with my older autistic brother and my family. Facing such a task can be overwhelming: Thoughts can be muddled, photography skills may not be up to par; even the statement of […]
I’ve been told that there are three things that you lose when you get old: your memory, your hair and…. I forgot the other one. Funny, right? Not so much. Today I spent more than an hour trying to remember the name of the book I read about a woman who had such an incredible memory, […]
