Debbie Castro
Age Is a Privilege, Unless You Forget!
Fábrica Cal Garbat
As her father’s dementia progresses, the camera becomes a tool for intimate exploration: who he is, who he was, and what remains when language and memory begin to fade.
Born of equal parts love and loss, the project responds to the need to maintain a connection despite the growing distance imposed by the illness – a distance from which both father and daughter try to escape, each in their own way.
Here, photography serves to map an ever-changing inner world that is difficult to keep up with, and also to move through grief rather than be held back by it: a headlong rush forward, sustained by the gaze and by the act of continuing to look.
Debbie Castro (Ireland) is a documentary photographer based between London, UK, and Kildare, Ireland.
Grief is the central theme and driving force behind her work, which is rooted in a deep curiosity about people, how they live their lives, and what lies beneath the surface.
Her ongoing project, Age Is a Privilege, Unless You Forget!, was exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy and published by The Library Project. A graduate of the University of Westminster, she is also an active educator.
