I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer's - Hardcover

Judith Fox

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1576875075 ISBN 13: 9781576875070

Publisher: powerHouse Books, 2009

Synopsis

“This is a lovely book about a devastating problem—Alzheimer’s. The pages are like poetry and the photos say more than words. Anyone who has cared for a loved one with Alzheimer’s will relate to and appreciate every one of these pages.”
—Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

“There is a sweetness in the light Judith Fox finds that softens a brutally unique and all too common experience. Ms. Fox has made the story about love and devotion when it might easily be expected to be about a more tragic and angry vision. But the tough stuff is lurking around every corner...”
—Arthur Ollman, Director, School of Art, Design, and Art History at San Diego State University

Three years into their marriage, Judith Fox’s husband, Dr. Edmund Ackell, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. Over the course of the next ten years, Fox watched as the man who used to perform surgery, fly planes, and run universities, forgot how to turn on the coffee maker, place a phone call, or remember what his wife had told him two minutes earlier.

More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s. A poignant and beautiful portrait of a man with Alzheimer’s as seen through the loving lens and words of his wife and care-partner, I Still Do: Loving and Living With Alzheimer’s puts a human face in front of the statistics, exploring the disease through Fox’s intimate photographs and poetic writing. While the details of I Still Do are personal and unique, this deeply candid story of illness, aging, partnership, and loving is universal.

About this title

About the Author:

Judith Fox has always had two careers: one as an artist and one as an entrepreneur. After working as a photographer, writer, and business executive in New York, Fox started a service company in Virginia that expanded in size and reputation and was eventually purchased by a New York Stock Exchange firm. After selling her company, she devoted herself full-time to photography. Widely exhibited on both coasts of the United States, Fox’s photography is also in many private and public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, and the Harry Ransom Center in Austin. Fox has been featured in dozens of newspaper and magazine articles and interviewed on numerous television and radio shows. Her NPR program, On the Job, ran in Virginia and Washington, D.C. She lives and works in California.

Roy Flukinger is the Senior Research Curator of Photography and former Senior Curator of Photography and Film of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published and lectured extensively in the fields of regional, cultural, and contemporary photography, and on the history of art and photography, and has produced or participated in nearly 80 exhibitions. He is currently completing the book and exhibition, Fritz Henle: In Search of Beauty.

Review:

LOVE NOT LOST When her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's more than 11 years ago, photographer Judith Fox used her camera lens to cope. Now she's compiled the pictures into a stunning book, I Still Do: Loving and Living With Alzheimer's (powerHouse Books), which tells a heartbreaking love story about a partnership that withstands illness and aging. --Elle Magazine

Chances are you know someone whose family is coping with Alzheimer's disease. More than 5 million Americans have it. For the millions who are caregivers, it's normal to feel anger, denial, depression or worse. Many of them probably don't want to be reminded that November is Alzheimer's Awareness Month.
But this disease has been in the closet too long, says Southern California photographer Judith Fox, whose new book, I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer's, is an inspiration. She wants to remove the stigma and sense of isolation so many families feel. Just three years into her marriage to Dr. Edmund Ackell, a multi-talented man who was a surgeon, pilot, artist, athlete and university administrator, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. For years, Fox had to see the man who'd wielded a scalpel or a basketball with utter confidence forget how to use the coffeemaker or recall what someone just said to him. But instead of falling into despair, Fox decided to capture the still-very-much-intact soul of the man she loves in luminous, funny, charming and heartbreaking photos. It was another way of loving him and touching him, she explains.
Why do family caregivers do what we do? she asks about this devastating disease in the video below. Because it's a privilege to help somebody, she says. We can do no less.
Fox is brave. It took me years to be able to talk or write about the caregiving journey I took with my father during his long illness. And I wish I'd had more practical resources like Leeza's Place, founded by TV celeb Leeza Gibbons during her caregiving experiences with her mom. But I now see how much I learned from that time in my life and how it helped me grow. Fox's beautiful book I Still Do is a powerful reminder that love can endure no matter what. --Ladie's Home Journal

"Modern, chic, just lovely." Rated one of Photo-eye Magazine's best ten photography books of 2009 as selected by Jennifer Thompson, editorial director of Princeton Architectural Press. --Photo-eye Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: powerHouse Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1576875075
• ISBN 13: 9781576875070
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128