Picturing Clouds of Unknowing: Photography, Lostness, and Cognitive Decline

Lucy Carolan

The central premise of this doctoral project is that the progressive cognitive ambiguity that is dementia can be creatively apprehended by way of lostness. As defined by Rebecca Solnit, ‘lost’ holds “...two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing.” The initial hypothesis of this research was that in certain neurodegenerative conditions the familiar and unfamiliar can confoundingly combine, and that it’s through the lens of this particular combination that some comprehension of dementia as lived experience may be approached. The disorienting misperceptions most commonly encountered in cognitive decline are visual in nature. Given, then, that dementia reveals the importance of vision to perception, how may the photographic, with lostness as optic, be used to illuminate cognitive decline? In what ways can creatively visualising aspects of neurodegeneration in dementia inform understandings of its existential ambiguities?

PICTURING CLOUDS OF UNKNOWING THREE: Cloud Complex

Cloud Complex in the context of display in the Hatton Gallery 19 August - 3 September 2022. Last Seen is to the left, Cloud Complex in the centre flanked on either side by The Stereoscopic Atlas of Agnes Osias, and Picturing Clouds of Unknowing Two is on the right.

A draft version of the text for this book as a test layout prior to splitting the lines for print.

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